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Annals of Pharmacy Education, Safety, and Public Health Advocacy

2026 Volume 6 Issue 1

Learning Across Pharmacy Placements Without Losing the Thread: How Conflicting Practice Norms and Dispersed Supervision Shape the Continuity of Professional Development


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  1. Department of Pharmacy Practice and Transitions of Care, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
  2. Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Health Systems, Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria.
  3. Department of Pharmacy Administration and Continuity of Care, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.
Abstract

Pharmacy education increasingly depends on learning distributed across multiple practice environments, supervisors, professional teams, and assessment episodes. Sequence alone, however, does not ensure that experiences accumulate into coherent professional development. This article examines continuity as a multilevel educational problem involving the learner, placement environment, supervisor relationships, and programme-level structures that connect otherwise separate episodes of workplace learning. A Multilevel Continuity Model is developed to explain how learners carry prior understanding into new sites, how local practice norms shape participation, how supervisory relationships preserve or interrupt developmental knowledge, and how programme mechanisms can integrate experiences across placements. The analysis distinguishes productive contextual variation from unresolved norm conflict and treats distributed supervision as potentially developmental when information, interpretation, and responsibility are transferred effectively. The central contribution is an account of longitudinal professional learning in which continuity depends on connections across experiences rather than simple repetition or prolonged exposure. The model therefore predicts that educational fragmentation can occur despite extensive placement time, while coherent development can emerge across heterogeneous sites when linking mechanisms preserve developmental meaning. Longitudinal pharmacy education should consequently be designed around the quality of cross-level connections among experiences, actors, expectations, and developmental information.


How to cite this article
Vancouver
Osei M, Petrova E, Park D. Learning Across Pharmacy Placements Without Losing the Thread: How Conflicting Practice Norms and Dispersed Supervision Shape the Continuity of Professional Development. Ann Pharm Educ Saf Public Health Advocacy. 2026;6(1):94-107. https://doi.org/10.51847/N0Zfrw1v1V
APA
Osei, M., Petrova, E., & Park, D. (2026). Learning Across Pharmacy Placements Without Losing the Thread: How Conflicting Practice Norms and Dispersed Supervision Shape the Continuity of Professional Development. Annals of Pharmacy Education, Safety, and Public Health Advocacy, 6(1), 94-107. https://doi.org/10.51847/N0Zfrw1v1V
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