Pharmacy preceptors often face the emotional strain of balancing their clinical responsibilities with the need to provide meaningful, constructive feedback to their learners. In addition, they often struggle with navigating learners’ emotions while delivering constructive feedback, aiming to be supportive yet honest in a way that doesn’t discourage growth. Join us at the National Pharmacy Preceptors Conference on October 2-3 to learn more.
The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the ASHP official podcast, your guide to issues related to medication use, public health, and the profession of pharmacy. - Thanks for joining us in this episode of Educator Essentials, the podcast where we talk with our members about success stories, best practices, and strategies for faculty, preceptors, and those involved in the education of the pharmacy workforce. My name is Hannah Post, and today we will be chatting with Dr. Riva Forbus. Pharmacy Administrative Specialist and PGY1 Residency Coordinator at Houston Methodist Wilbroke in Houston, Texas, about preceptor challenges in our upcoming educational session titled Breaking Down Walls and Riveling the Barriers to Constructive Feedback at the 2024 ASHP Virtual National Pharmacy Preceptors Conference. Thanks for joining us today, Dr. Forbus. So what is constructive feedback? - Constructive feedback really is what we aim to give our learners. A lot of our learners need to have goals and things to work toward, and for that, they really need that very specific feedback that gives them those opportunities to grow. And sometimes constructive feedback is kind of hard to give to some learners if we don't pay attention to certain cues. So constructive feedback is some of the things that we try to give our learners opportunities by giving them very specific feedback. So what we mean by constructive feedback is we wanna make sure that we give our learners the opportunities to grow. So to do that, we need to be able to give them specifics about what they need to do to improve, and it also helps to motivate them to want to improve. And to do that, we have to recognize specific cues in our learners to be able to give that constructive feedback. And unfortunately, a lot of times we miss those cues or we don't have time to be able to truly assess our students. And that's one of the reasons that we decided to do this talk. - So when you're talking about personalization and growth and specifics, why do you think it is so challenging for preceptors to provide this constructive feedback? - The first and foremost, I feel, is we are all pulled in so many directions, especially in the hospital setting. We have to take care of our patients. Most of us are also working on multiple committees or we have different objectives to try to look at different care navigation as well as looking to reduce our readmissions, help our patients. There's so many directives that we're in at the time that we also have students. So it's easy to miss some of those cues that our students are giving us while we're in the middle of our day-to-day. The other thing is, is we do have in a lot of places a relatively young workforce. And a lot of them haven't had the chance to truly assess their personal means of communication. They really haven't been able to grow as much with students. So a lot of it is also the assessment piece and to be able to know how you work with students and learners. - Can us also have a negative outcome on the preceptor? - Oh, definitely. I have myself come out of a learning experience and wished I had been able to just put that one more ounce of time into a student or into a resident and not had it to be able to give. I know that I have had many conversations with preceptors that I work with and they've felt that same guilt. It's like, I really wish I could have dedicated time to spend, but maybe I got pulled into a code or maybe I had to go to too many meetings. And sometimes I feel like we're pulled in so many directions. It's almost like which one do we choose. And sometimes patient care trumps a lot of things that we do because that is why we're in the hospitals to take care of our patients. And I think we all have a little bit of a guilt that we don't always give 100% to our learners. - So what can preceptors do to overcome these barriers? - Well, that's one of the main things that we really wanted to do this program about. Over the past year, we've worked with a lot of our preceptors on some of these things that they brought up and some of the tools that they have to be able to increase their self-awareness, we have been able to implement at our program and we've seen that that really does make a difference in the communication with the learners. So that's the first thing is making sure that they have the tools they need to grow and then the other big pieces are the struggle with time management. So different tips that we have found that be beneficial, whether it be dedicated time or just making sure that you're in the right environment to not get interrupted. We really think that there are a lot of different tools that can be used so that at the end of the day, we can take care of our patients as well as our learners. - That's all the time we have for today. I wanna thank Dr. Riva Forbus for joining us. Dr. Forbus will be presenting breaking down walls and rambling the barriers to constructive feedback during ASHP's National Pharmacy Preceptors Conference on October 3rd. To find out more information about this session and the rest of ASHP's educational programming offered at the meeting, visit preceptors.ashp.org or contact us at educationserve@ashp.org. Thanks again for tuning in and we hope you enjoyed today's conversation. We look forward to seeing you at our conference in October. - Thank you for listening to ASHP official, the voice of pharmacists advancing healthcare. Be sure to visit ashp.org/podcast to discover more great episodes, access show notes and download the episode transcript. 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