Scholarship does not have to be hard

Abstract

Scholarship is an important part of the academic environment. It’s one of three main areas used to evaluate faculty for promotion and tenure, but the idea of a scholarly mindset touches multiple elements of academic pharmacy for both faculty and students. American Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) Accreditation Standards 2016 include an expectation of faculty scholarship, saying “The college or school creates an environment that both requires and promotes scholarship and also develops mechanisms to assess both the quantity and quality of faculty scholarly productivity.” 1 The 2011-12 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Academic Affairs Standing Committee report advocated a scholarly approach to teaching, defined as “...[going] beyond content knowledge and preparing and delivering lecture content to include evidencebased practice and pedagogical knowledge of teaching and motivation best practices.” 2 ACPE’s Standards 2016 also support the importance of a scholarly mindset for students, saying they should be prepared for “Evaluation of research methods and protocol design required to conduct valid and reliable studies to test hypotheses or answer research questions, and to appropriately evaluate the validity and reliability of the conclusions of published research studies.” 1 The Pharmacists Patient Care Process, widely endorsed and supported by professional pharmacy organizations, can be described as a scholarly approach to patient care, with data collection and assessment steps familiar to anyone experienced with experimental design.3.