Building pharmacists' research-to-practice capacity through province-wide continuing education: Baseline readiness, immediate effects, and an implementation model.

INTRODUCTION

Pharmacists increasingly need practice-based research skills, but workforce readiness, educational response, and posttraining support needs remain under-described in resource-constrained health systems.

METHODS

A baseline survey with a nested one-group pre-post educational evaluation was conducted during a one-day continuing education program in Dong Thap Province, Vietnam. Eligible pharmacists worked in public or private healthcare facilities and completed electronic questionnaires. Analytic samples included 193 pretraining pharmacists, 135 unique posttraining pharmacists, and 104 conservatively matched pre-post pairs. Outcomes included knowledge, attitudes, confidence, satisfaction, intention to apply learning, perceived barriers, and support needs. Paired analyses used Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for total-score changes and exact McNemar tests for item-level knowledge changes.

RESULTS

At baseline, 48.7% had never participated in medication-use or quality-improvement research, 72.5% had no related output in the previous three years, and 53.9% had never used research to change practice. Leading barriers were insufficient workforce (77.7%), limited mentorship (66.8%), lack of time (64.2%), limited interprofessional collaboration (62.2%), and difficulty using English-language or international evidence (61.1%). In matched analyses, knowledge changed from 6.09 to 6.43 of 8 (mean change, 0.35; Wilcoxon P = 0.059; Cohen dz = 0.21), attitude from 32.91 to 33.92 of 40 (mean change, 1.01; Wilcoxon P = 0.004; dz = 0.22), and confidence from 28.12 to 30.36 of 40 (mean change, 2.24; Wilcoxon P < 0.001; dz = 0.36). Satisfaction was high, while 63.7% indicated possible participation in at least one medication-use improvement or research activity within three months and 85.9% reported needing a posttraining support focal point.

DISCUSSION: The largest immediate gains were affective and self-efficacy related; implementation readiness remained conditional on workplace supports.

CONCLUSION

Sustaining pharmacist research capacity may require education combined with mentoring, protected time, standardized tools, and feedback into medication-use governance.