The use of simulation as a training method in the pharmaceutical field. Comparison between face-to-face scenarios and virtual scenarios.

For several years, the areas of competence of pharmaceutical services have evolved towards what is called the Pharmacy of services. The pharmacy extends its skills and activities beyond the mere supply of medicines, providing services related to the national health system (booking visits, payment of hospital tickets, collection of reports) and providing a contribution in primary care and monitoring of citizens’ health (from vaccinations to monitoring parameters such as blood sugar and blood pressure). This implies a greater and varied exposure of pharmacists to situations that require solid skills both on a technical and relational level, in the management of relations with users. Consequently, the training courses must adapt to these new challenges to enrich the pharmacist’s skills profile. A method widely used in training courses in the health sector is simulation, both the socalled ‘high fidelity’ (faithful reproduction of the operational contexts typical of the profession in which typical situations are reproduced) and relational simulation (reproduction of situations of a relational nature in which the operator must interact with a user/patient). This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of simulation as a training method of knowledge and competences, both of a technical nature (skills and knowledge specific to the professional context), and of a non-technical nature (relational skills, decision-making skills, etc.), in the context of the Farmacia dei Servizi. Specifically, we wanted to investigate the educational effectiveness of two simulation approaches, one that provides for the realization in the presence of simulated scenarios, the other that is based on the realization of these scenarios on a digital platform, usable in asynchronous and autonomous mode by students.