Using Debate to Teach Pharmacy Students About Ethical Issues
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Objective To create, implement, and evaluate debate as a method of teaching pharmacy undergraduate students about ethical issues. Design Debate workshops with 5 hours of contact with student peers and facilitators and 5 hours of self-study were developed for second-year pharmacy students. Student development of various skills and understanding of the topic were assessed by staff members and student peers. Assessment One hundred fifty students completed the workshops. The mean score for debating was 25.9 out of 30, with scores ranging from 23.2 to 28.7. Seventy percent of students agreed that the debates were a useful teaching method in the degree program. Conclusion A series of workshops using debates effectively delivered course content on ethical issues and resulted in pharmacy students developing skills such as teamwork, peer assessment, communication, and critical evaluation. These findings suggest that pharmacy students respond favorably to a program using debates as a teaching tool.
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Debates have been employed in pharmacy education for active learning and assessment activities in various contexts, including advocacy on ethical and legal issues, controversial policy issues in the US healthcare system, critical thinking and communication skills, evidence-based analysis and evaluation, and pharmacotherapy.
“Debates, however, have been employed in pharmacy education for active learning and assessment activities in various contexts (e.g.advocacy on ethical and legal issues, controversial policy issues in the US healthcare system, critical thinking and communication skills, evidence-based analysis and evaluation, and pharmacotherapy) (Lin & Crawford, 2007;”
From Students’ performance and perceptions of mock trials as a teaching and assessment activity over three years at two institutions (2024) · cites this paper as Hanna et al., 2014
The Introduction and Summary (pages unavailable) describe debates used to teach ethical issues to pharmacy students and to develop critical thinking, communication, and evaluation of evidence. The References also list a pharmacy-education use in pharmacotherapy. The paper does not establish the claimed pharmacy-education use for advocacy on legal issues or controversial US healthcare policy; its cited healthcare-policy debate concerned residents, not pharmacy students. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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Hirsch, M. A., Nguyen, V. Q. C., Wieczorek, N. S., Rhoads, C. F., & Weaver, P. R. (2017) · MedEdPORTAL · doi:10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10655 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Rosenberg, E., Hsu, S.-Y., Truong, H.-A., & Taheri, R. (2024) · Pharmacy Education · doi:10.46542/pe.2024.241.2939
- Authors
- Hanna, L.-A., Barry, J., Donnelly, R., Hughes, F., Jones, D., Laverty, G., Parsons, C., & Ryan, C.
- Affiliations
- Queen's University Belfast (GB)
- Venue
- American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-04
- Volume
- 78
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 57
- ISSN
- 0002-9459 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3996389
- OpenAlex
- W2047002893
- Cited by
- 66
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 12 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 27.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Problem and Project Based Learning
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Innovations in Medical Education
- Social Sciences › Education › Innovative Teaching Methods
- Keywords
- pharmacy students, undergraduate pharmacy curriculum, peer assessment, teamwork skills, communication skills, critical appraisal, student perceptions of teaching methods
- MeSH terms
- Communication, Curriculum, Education, Pharmacy, Educational Status, Ethics, Pharmacy, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Learning, Peer Group, Schools, Pharmacy, Students, Pharmacy, Teaching, Thinking, Program Evaluation, Comprehension
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