RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Benchmarking in Academic Pharmacy Departments
JF American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education
JO Am J Pharm Educ
FD American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy
SP 140
DO 10.5688/aj7408140
VO 74
IS 8
A1 John A. Bosso
A1 Marie Chisholm-Burns
A1 Jean Nappi
A1 Paul O. Gubbins
A1 Leigh Ann Ross
YR 2010
UL http://www.ajpe.org/content/74/8/140.abstract
AB Benchmarking in academic pharmacy, and recommendations for the potential uses of benchmarking in academic pharmacy departments are discussed in this paper. Benchmarking is the process by which practices, procedures, and performance metrics are compared to an established standard or best practice. Many businesses and industries use benchmarking to compare processes and outcomes, and ultimately plan for improvement. Institutions of higher learning have embraced benchmarking practices to facilitate measuring the quality of their educational and research programs. Benchmarking is used internally as well to justify the allocation of institutional resources or to mediate among competing demands for additional program staff or space. Surveying all chairs of academic pharmacy departments to explore benchmarking issues such as department size and composition, as well as faculty teaching, scholarly, and service productivity, could provide valuable information. To date, attempts to gather this data have had limited success. We believe this information is potentially important, urge that efforts to gather it should be continued, and offer suggestions to achieve full participation.