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Professional Engagement Definition

Decent Essays

Aronson and Janke wrote an insightful article in a paramount area with limited prior evidence--the importance of student pharmacists’ professional engagement.1 We hoped to extend their evidence further with a few other noteworthy findings.
The first comes from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy’s (ACCP) national student leaders who highlighted professional engagement (ie, professional stewardship) as a tenet of professionalism for student pharmacists.2 This despite that “Pharmacists’ Tenets for Professionalism” do not mention professional engagement.3
The second comes from an instrument developed to measure professionalism of recent PharmD graduates.4 Professional engagement was in a number of items, and the instrument showed exceptionally-high unidimensionality. (Another geographically-separate cohort of recent PharmD graduates confirmed this very-high unidimensionality.5) The very-high unidimensionality suggests that these graduates had a clear-cut concept of professionalism--and items regarding professional engagement were very congruent with the overall instrument.
Further evidence comes from AOB’s and JBW’s perspectives as …show more content…

This profession-centered identity of a student pharmacist (not “pharmacy student”) has two parts. On one hand, student pharmacists are engaged in the student’s individual development into a professional. On the other hand, importantly and often neglected student pharmacists are also engaged in activities and opportunities that further develop the profession. This adds to professional stewardship/engagement as more than just moving some students’ learning “outside of the classroom”2--it is a way for student pharmacists to progressively unify their parallel development of personal and professional identity

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