Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy student perceptions of the entry-level Doctor of Pharmacy degree: A qualitative study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Canadian academic pharmacy institutions are undergoing a credential shift from a baccalaureate degree to an entry-level Doctor of Pharmacy (ELPD). Objective: To characterise how Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy (BSP) students perceive this transition. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight randomly-selected students from each BSP class in 2017-18. Thematic analysis was performed using NVivo qualitative analysis software. Results: Students’ opinions on the impact of the Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) varied (n=24). Six themes emerged: positive academic and social experiences, perceptions of the Pharm.D. programme, insecurities of BSP students, impact on future employment, mixed plans to pursue Pharm.D., and suggestions for improvement. Participants were concerned about Pharm.D. graduates being preferentially hired for hospital pharmacy jobs. Conclusion: Increased dialogue between faculty and students is necessary to provide reassurance. The credential shift to Pharm.D. should not deter BSP graduates’ desire to work in a specific practice setting.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".