Abstract
BACKGROUND: While academic groups in China offer one-year standardized training for clinical pharmacists, these programs primarily emphasize clinical knowledge and may not adequately address the lack of job readiness and clinical soft skills among graduates without an academic background in clinical pharmacy. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a new pre-training model, the Clinical Pharmacist Occupational Adaptive Learning (CPOAL) program, in enhancing the professional adaptability and clinical soft skills of newly recruited pharmacists (NRPs) alongside the existing one-year clinical pharmacist training. METHOD: The study included 20 NRPs without a clinical pharmacy background who were randomly divided into a CPOAL group and a control group. The CPOAL group underwent a three-month professional adaptability training program before the one-year standardized training. A questionnaire assessing career awareness, insight and independent thinking, cooperation, good character, execution ability, and stress resistance was given to both groups before and after the one-year training to analyze differences within and between the groups. In addition, after the one-year training, seven aspects of clinical soft skills, such as mental status, communication skills, resilience, comprehensive analysis, clinical thinking, patient privacy protection, and compassion for patients, were evaluated by three general medicine experts and three clinical pharmacy experts to determine the impact of CPOAL program on improving NRPs' soft skills. RESULTS: Compared to the control group, the CPOAL group exhibited notable enhancements in career awareness, adaptability to management demands, and basic work content adaptability, along with improvements in clinical reasoning and interdisciplinary collaboration abilities. Additionally, the CPOAL group displayed notably superior scores in adaptability, comprehensive analysis, and humanitarian values. CONCLUSIONS: CPOAL program serves as a valuable supplement to the existing clinical pharmacy training system, greatly enhancing the professional adaptability and clinical soft skills of NRPs. This pre-training model offers valuable insights for enhancing professional capabilities and improving the quality of medical services, with the potential for widespread adoption and impact.