부산대학교 도서관

Background: The Bachelor of Science (B.S.) program at the National Taiwan University School of Pharmacy (NTUSP) has been transformed into a six-year entry-level Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) program with a transitional period of 2009 to 2017. We aimed to develop an instrument to measure students' perceived self-efficacy as an indicator to evaluate their learning outcomes and to compare the differences of professional competency among the fourth (PharmD-4), fifth, and sixth year (PharmD-6) of pharmacy school. Methods: Our scale was developed based on a literature review, input from focus groups, expert reviews, and beta-testing. Self-efficacy was evaluated using a cross-sectional survey for PharmD-4 through PharmD-6 and fourth-year B.S. students (BS-4) in May of 2017. Results: The original 119-item self-efficacy scale consisted of five domains including interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, pharmaceutical care, systems-based practice, and practice-based learning and improvements. The content validity index, using beta-testing, revealed satisfying results for the 116 items selected. After item analysis and stratified exploratory factor analysis based on 81 respondents (94% response rate) were performed, 53 items were retained in the short form with Cronbach's alpha scoring 0.969. The criterion-related validity indicated that students with better academic performance had higher scores in overall self-efficacy and in the professionalism and pharmaceutical care domains (p ＜ 0.05). The scale revealed that PharmD-6 tended to express the highest self-efficacy levels in all domains except for the interpersonal and communication skills domain. They also showed significantly superior self-efficacy in the pharmaceutical care domain compared to BS-4 (p ＜ 0.05). Conclusion: The validated scale measuring pharmacy students' self-efficacy in professional competency suggested that PharmD-6 demonstrated the highest self-efficacy in comparison to students in the B.S. program.