Knowledge retention of basic pharmaceutical sciences in a PharmD program

Objectives: To measure the retention of basic sciences knowledge in a PharmD program over a period of two years. Methods: The study was conducted in two phases using assessment scores of the students. The first phase measured the whether basic science knowledge was retained over a period of two years using historical data. The aim of the second phase was the same, but used a prospective study design. Additionally, the second phase also examined subject wise retention of knowledge. Results: The first phase data analysis across all subjects showed a slight decay of knowledge over two years. The second phase data analysis showed relatively small significant knowledge gain across all subjects and moderately significant knowledge gain for biomedical sciences. Conclusions: The results of the study demonstrate a varying level of retention of biomedical science s and pharmacology knowledge over time. With the understanding that the graduating pharmacy students are not expected to retain or remember all the knowledge they gained from the first year of the program, these results demonstrate a satisfactory level of retention. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.