Health Practices and Perceptions on Lifestyle Counseling Among Student Pharmacists

Background: Pharmacists are positioned to promote and facilitate health behavior change given their accessibility within the community. To ensure that student pharmacists are adequately trained to fulfill these roles, public health topics are integrated throughout the Center for the Advancement of Pharmaceutical Education (CAPE) Educational Outcomes 2013 which guide the curricular decisions within the academy. There is a paucity of data regarding student pharmacists’ perceptions on lifestyle counseling. The health status and health practices of student pharmacists in the United States are not well described. Objective: To determine health status, health practices, and perceptions on lifestyle counseling among student pharmacists Methods: A survey was administered to all students in a PharmD program at a public university in September 2016-October 2016. The survey has three areas: 1) personal characteristics, 2) health behaviors, and 3) opinions on lifestyle counseling. Descriptive statistics were performed to characterize health status and health practices. Logistic regression was performed to identify relationships between variables and student-specific factors including demographics and current standing in the curriculum. A priori level of significance was set at 0.05. Results: The 93 students who participated were predominantly female (57%) and non- Hispanic white (41.9%) with mean age of 27.7 years. 41.3% had BMI classified as overweight or obese. 45.3% of females and 43% of males considered themselves in very good health (p = 0.72). 66% of females and 43% of males had a personal physician (p = 0.02) with [greater than] 50% of these students stating that the physician emphasized disease prevention (p = 0.17). More than 90% of student pharmacists want to engage in health-promoting lifestyles such as eating more fruit and vegetables (p = 0.002). More female students than male students perceive patient counseling on nutrition as highly relevant to their practice (OR 2.13, CI 0.84-5.36). Conclusions: Student pharmacists reported good health practices in comparison to other adults in the United States. Student pharmacists are interested in personal health-promoting practices including increased consumption of fruits and vegetables. There are several areas of lifestyle counseling that student pharmacists deem irrelevant to their intended practice with differences in opinion based on gender.