COVID-19-seen through the eyes of the pharmacy interns

ABSTRACT

Background: One hundred and thirty (130) pharmacy students from the University of Copenhagen were doing their pharmacy internship in community pharmacy. Here they are to acquire knowledge of, as well as skills and competencies in, areas such as organisation, leadership, ethics, economy, patient counselling, patient safety, cooperation etc. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the entire world and created an extra steep learning curve for the interns. And why not try and combine the two the pharmacy internship learning and the COVID-19 crisis? It is important to explore how pharmacies manage their customary and newly emerging roles during the COVID-19 outbreak. Purpose(s) The purpose of the study is to reveal how the COVID-19 pandemic influences pharmacy organisation, leadership, ethics, economy, patient counselling, patient safety, and cooperation seen through the eyes of the pharmacy interns. Method(s) A two-page long questionnaire on how COVID-19 influences the above mentioned areas was uploaded to the internship webpage, hopefully inspiring the interns, who were tasked with handing in a nine-page long report as part of their exam. A content analysis of the reports will be done. Result(s) Since the interns hand in their reports by June 19 2020, no results are available yet. If all interns write about COVID-19 in their report, though, more than 1,000 pages on their COVID-19 experiences will exist. Answers with the most insightful learning potential for pharmacy practice globally will be presented and discussed. Conclusion(s) Having successfully carried out pharmacy internship-based research for more than 20 years in Denmark, we are convinced that the study will reveal useful results.