Pharmacy Curriculum Outcomes Assessment^® (PCOA^®)

The PCOA

Responding to the need expressed by US colleges and schools of pharmacy for an assessment tool to assist with curriculum development and to measure student growth and performance, NABP has worked closely with key stake­holders to develop the Pharmacy Curriculum Outcomes Assessment (PCOA).

A comprehensive tool that enables schools to analyze and evaluate performance in the curriculum, the PCOA also provides extremely valuable data on individual students’ strengths, weakness, and progress from year to year. PCOA score reports are comparable across the curriculum years and permit measurement of student and program progress. As an assessment tool, the PCOA is similar in concept to the in-service examinations administered to medical in­terns and residents annually throughout their residency programs.

In 2007, eight nationally representative schools of pharma­cy participated in a PCOA pilot study. Analysis of the pilot demonstrated that there is high level of confidence in the reliability and validity of the assessment tool’s scores and the inferences garnered about the abilities of students and the effectiveness of a school’s curriculum.

PCOA Format

The format of the PCOA is a 220-item multiple choice paper-and-pencil assessment. The content of the PCOA fol­lows a blueprint that reflects actual curriculum hours as derived from a national sample of all college and school of pharmacy curriculums. The PCOA is composed of four major content areas that are broken down into 35 sub-topic areas. The assessment’s four major content areas and the corresponding percentage of items are as follows.

• 21% Basic Biomedical Sciences
• 28.5% Pharmaceutical Sciences
• 14.5% Social, Behavioral, & Administrative Pharmacy Sciences
• 36% Clinical Sciences

Administration & Score Reporting

To provide for fair and standardized results, the PCOA will be administered annually by participating schools of pharmacy during a designated window of time. The assessment is appropriate for students in all four professional years, and provides schools of pharmacy with relevant information regarding students and pharmacy program performance across all the professional years.

Score reports will be sent to the pharmacy school and student; these reports will contain a variety of data in order to provide the best information about individual student performance as well as pharmacy program per­formance. Please note that stu­dent- and school-specific scores will never be released to other schools; however, national percentiles for scores and program years will be provided in all reports.

Reports the schools of pharmacy will receive include:

Individual Student Score Report – details total score and national comparisons as well as a breakdown of the score by content area and sub-topic.
School of Pharmacy Report – includes score data by year for the assessment as a whole and broken down by both content area and sub-topic.
School of Pharmacy Report Student Sum­mary Report – contains a side-by-side comparison of each student’s data including where they rank in the national average.

For further information about the PCOA program please contact NABP Customer Service at custserv@nabp.net.

• Informational Brochure
• FAQ
• Benefits of the PCOA
• PCOA Content Areas