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Relationship of Prepharmacy Repeat Course History to Students’ Early Academic Difficulty in a Pharmacy Curriculum

Objective. To examine the relationship between students’ prepharmacy repeat course history and their academic difficulties early in a professional pharmacy program in conjunction with other prerequisite success variables known to predict academic difficulty. Methods. For students admitted to a pharmacy program in 2010 and 2011 (n=160), admission variables [eg, prepharmacy coursework, grade point average (GPA)] and pharmacy program academic difficulty data (ie, academic difficulty defined as a pharmacy GPA in the bottom quartile of the class after 3 semesters of pharmacy course work) were extracted. Regression analysis was employed to examine the relationship between admission variables and academic difficulty. Results. Twenty-six percent of the students (n=42) repeated a course, and 50% of these students (n=21) repeated more than one course. All of the admissions variables studied were found to individually increase the odds of a student having academic difficulty early in the pharmacy program. Specifically, repeat of a prepharmacy course increased the odds of academic difficulty threefold. Conclusion. Repeating prepharmacy coursework appears to be a strong indicator of future academic difficulties early in a professional pharmacy program.