Survey of Bachelor of Pharmacy Students Thesis Trends Before, During, and After the Covid-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic spread to Indonesia in March 2020 and subsided in mid-2022. The pandemic has had a major impact on the health of people around the world and has affected other aspects of life, especially education. The pandemic had an impact on academic activities in higher education. This study aims to describe the research patterns of bachelor pharmacy student's thesis before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We also investigated the reasons for students in determining thesis research topics and the percentage of theses published in journals or proceedings. The study was designed observationally with a questionnaire to collect the data. The respondents included pharmacy undergraduate students at Universitas Gadjah Mada who are completing or have completed the thesis during the period before, during, or after the COVID-19 pandemic. The data obtained were analyzed descriptively according to the same variables such as trends in thesis research topics, students' reasons for determining topics, and number of journal publications from thesis research. The total number of respondents who completed the questionnaire was 258, with 53, 100, and 95 students conducting the research before, during, and after the pandemic, respectively. Before the pandemic, among all respondents, most of them conducted research on the topics of pharmaceutical technology (22.73%), pharmacology & toxicology (15.91%), pharmacotherapy & clinical pharmacy (15.91%), and pharmacy management and community pharmacy (15.91%). In terms of research methods, most of them conducted laboratory-based research (76.06%). During the pandemic, the topics of research were dominated by pharmacotherapy & clinical pharmacy (34.88%), and pharmacy management and community pharmacy (32.56%), and the most common type of final project study was literature review (47.57%).  After the pandemic subsided in mid-2022, pharmacy management and community pharmacy (41.94%) was the most dominant one. In the study, we observed that scientific interest and supervisor competence were two main reasons for students in determining the topic of research topics. Among respondents, up to 25% of all bachelor student thesis was published in the form of national and international journal articles, and presentations at national and international conferences. Based on the study, we conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the trends of bachelor pharmacy student thesis.