Sojo University has an outside-school experience program entitled“Early Exposure”whose objectives are to help students realize the importance of 1)taking responsibility for performing duties and 2)having a good attitude.They are also expected to realize the importance of 3)protecting personal information and 4)their studies at the university.The outsideschool experience program is conducted with the cooperation of 37 institutions which include those that have pharmacists working at them,such as hospitals and clinics,and those that do not,such as welfare facilities for children and senior care homes.Based on information on individual facilities,students select the ones they are interested going to and then teachers assign the students to specific institutions in accordance with their interests.
To evaluate the effectiveness of the program,we conducted a questionnaire survey.The results showed that 93.6% of the students were satisfied with it and that early exposure to such institutions made students pay more attention to nursing,welfare,and understanding terms used in welfare and pharmaceutical science.After the early exposure program,there was also an increase in the number of the students who felt cooperation with colleagues is very important.Applying the Wilcoxon's signed rank sum test to the results of questionnaires conducted before and after the program with regard to the above points showed that there were significant differences between them.
Our findings indicate that training giving students early exposure to such institutions increased the interest of students in medical care.The also show that participating in the program enabled students to achieve the attainment targets given in the model core curriculum for pharmaceutical education.