Can pharmaceutical history courses contribute in building future pharmacy leaders? A preliminary study from Erciyes University, Turkey

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between pharmacy students' opinions on the importance of leadership and their levels of interest in pharmaceutical history. We administered a structured questionnaire to 160 undergraduate students (response rate of 86.3%) who have taken pharmaceutical history courses at the Erciyes University Faculty of Pharmacy in the past three years. We observed that 42.8% of the participants valued leadership as a very important skill that a pharmacist should possess through his/her professional career, of which 54.2% were very interested in pharmaceutical history. There is a statistically significant relationship between participants' opinions on the importance of leadership and their levels of interest in pharmaceutical history. Our findings suggest that the participants valuing leadership as a very important skill are more interested in pharmaceutical history than those valuing leadership as an unimportant skill. This result indicates that pharmaceutical history courses can serve as an effective tool for developing pharmacy students' awareness and attitudes toward professional leadership.