Pharmacy Fellowship Programs in the United States: Perceptions from Fellows and Preceptors.
This paper reports on a survey that assesses preceptor and fellow attitudes, expectations, activities, and recommendations for pharmacy fellowships. Two separate questionnaires, one for preceptors and one for fellows were developed. Sixty-six of 117 preceptors (56 percent) responded and 57 fellows returned completed questionnaires. There was some degree of discrepancy between preceptors and fellows in the activities perceived as being accomplished during fellowship training. A significantly lower percentage of fellows believed they were involved in the initial and later stages of research including grant submission, IRB submission, research presentation, and manuscript submission as compared to preceptors perceptions of their fellows’ activities. In addition, fellows indicated that a larger percentage of their time was devoted to clinical service and clerkship student supervision versus the time the preceptors thought their fellows were involved in these activities. The most commonly listed strengths and weaknesses of fellowship programs according to the fellow was appropriate time devoted to clinical research and too much time devoted to clinical practice, respectively. Forty-nine percent of preceptors listed the number of potential research projects as the major strength of their program with difficulty in finding funding as the major limitation. The majority of fellows who responded to the questionnaire were very satisfied with their fellowship experience and most of the preceptors felt that fellowship review by a committee such as the American College of Clinical Pharmacy would be valuable to their program.