Development of a Virtual Pharmacy Resident Conference

Participating pharmacy residents submitted presentation titles to the ACPE planning committee and identified which of the 3 content tracks the research fell into: ambulatory care, acute care, or pharmacy administration. A presentation schedule was then developed.

VISN 11 pharmacists were invited to register for each of the presentations. Registration took place through the VHA Talent Management System. Presentations were delivered through Microsoft Lync (Redmond, WA), a web-based communication and conferencing platform. The VA eHealth University could have been used to achieve the same outcome.

Statistical Analysis

Presentation content breakdown and attendance rates from the VISN 11 Virtual Pharmacy Resident Conference were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The comparison of attendance rates at the virtual conference with those expected for the regional face-to-face conference was analyzed using a single sample t test.

Results

The VISN 11 Virtual Pharmacy Resident Conference took place May 5-7, 2014. Twenty-six of the 29 pharmacy residents in VISN 11 delivered 23 presentations. Three presentations had 2 presenters each, as these had completed their research as a team. Each presentation was approved by ACPE for 0.5 CE hours for a total of 11.5 CE hours available to participants.

Of the 23 presentations, 16 (69.6%) focused on ambulatory care, 5 (21.7%) on pharmacy administration, and 2 (8.7%) on acute care (Figure 1). The ambulatory care presentations were divided into subgroups of diabetes (n = 6), mental health (n = 4), anticoagulation (n = 4), and cardiology (n = 2). Diabetes and cardiology presentations were delivered on day 1 of the conference, mental health and anticoagulation on day 2, and acute care and pharmacy administration on day 3.

A total of 386 VISN 11 pharmacists were invited to attend the virtual conference and 71 pharmacists (18.4%) registered for at least 1 presentation. VISN 11 pharmacy participation at the virtual conference was increased by 50% compared with the attendance at the 29th Annual Great Lakes Pharmacy Resident Conference, hosted by Purdue University, where only 47 VISN 11 pharmacists (12.2%) were expected to attend, based on results of a VISN-wide survey (95% confidence interval, 0.15-0.23; P < .001) (Figure 2).

On average, each participant attended 7 presentations and earned 3.5 hours of ACPE credit. Of the pharmacists who registered, 14 (19.7%) were pharmacy residents. Of note, registration was not required to deliver a presentation, which explains why the number of pharmacy residents registered to attend (14) was less than the number of pharmacy residents that delivered presentations (26).

More pharmacists registered for ambulatory care presentations (76.2%), followed by pharmacy administration (16.4%) and acute care (7.4%). These differences may be explained by the variability in the number of presentations within each content track. The registration for ambulatory care presentations, when stratified by content subgroup, was 45.7% for diabetes, 22.6% for mental health, 21.2% for anticoagulation, and 10.5% for cardiology.

The first day of the conference had the largest number of participants with 42.8% of all registrants, followed by 33.4% of registrants attending presentations on day 2 and 23.8% on day 3. The presentation with the largest number of registrants was in the diabetes subgroup, which was presented on the first day of the conference. The pharmacy administration presentation was held on the third and final day of the conference and had the lowest number of registrants. An average of 21.2 pharmacists registered for each presentation.

Discussion

The VISN 11 Virtual Pharmacy Resident Conference was structured in a way that offered benefits to multiple groups. First, the virtual conference served as a medium for pharmacy residents to present their yearlong research projects and meet an ASHP residency requirement. Second, the virtual conference greatly expanded the audience size and potential impact of the presentations. Traditionally, resident research projects have been available to the few pharmacists who are able to attend an in-person conference. Almost 20% of all VISN 11 pharmacists were able to attend at least 1 presentation over the course of the 3-day conference. Attendance may increase as the virtual conference becomes more familiar to the VISN 11 pharmacy staff.

Access to a larger audience may help more pharmacists understand veteran-specific research. The information discovered through these research projects may be valuable to advance the clinical and administrative role of pharmacy within each facility as well as the entire VISN. Previously, staff pharmacists could not easily learn about resident research projects taking place at their local and neighboring VA facilities. In addition to the increased impact having a larger audience size also increases staff buy-in and feedback toward the projects.

Related:Non–Daily-Dosed Rosuvastatin in Statin-Intolerant Veterans