From drug-oriented curriculum to patient-oriented curriculum in Chile: Alumni satisfaction as a quality indicator for a pharmacy programme

Abstract

Background: In 2005, a Health Care Reform in Chile established the role of pharmacists as contributors to achieving therapeutic goals. To fulfil the needs of the country in 2007 the pharmacy programme at Austral University of Chile started transiting from a drug-oriented to a patient-oriented curriculum. Objective: Monitoring this transition process using alumni satisfaction as a quality indicator. Methods: A questionnaire to assess alumni satisfaction with the pharmacy programme was designed and validated in its content and reliability. Subsequently, cross-sectional surveys over samples of graduates from both, drug-oriented and patient-oriented curriculum alumni were conducted. Satisfaction scores of both samples were statistically compared. Results: Cronbach´s alpha for all six dimensions of the final questionnaire was ≥ 0.70. The patient-oriented curriculum generated higher satisfaction scores (p < 0.001), noteworthy in dimensions ‘Design and organisation’, ‘Teachers’ and ‘Emotional bonding with the program/university’. In three out of 34 items the patient-oriented curriculum was less satisfactory than the drug-oriented one. Conclusions: Alumni satisfaction assessment is a useful source of feedback for quality assurance and continuous improvement of programmes. Considering this indicator, the transition of the pharmacy programme at Austral University of Chile to a patient-oriented curriculum was essentially successful.