Exploring pharmacists' communication with customers through screening services

To describe pharmacist-customer communication, during blood pressure and capillary cholesterol services, in a community pharmacy setting.

Participants were purposively selected and data collected by audio-recording. The encounters' verbal content was transcribed verbatim, utterances identified, time stamped, and classified according to a coding scheme of 15 categories. Four dialogue structures were analyzed: speaker turn, interactivity, turn density and turn duration.

Eighty-three episodes were registered (51 blood pressure, 32 cholesterol). The average blood pressure episode lasted 5:35 min, with 81.2 utterances (55.3% customers), and an interactivity rate of 7 turns/min. The average cholesterol episode took 7:05 min, with 135.3 utterances (52.7% pharmacists), and an interactivity rate of 13.3 turns/min. In both cases, pharmacists asked more questions (mainly closed ones), while customers gave more information. An increased number of speaker turns and closed questions were associated to higher systolic pressure. No correlations were identified with cholesterol values.

It would seem that pharmacists tend to control the exchange and its content through closed questioning. Although talk dominance is balanced, hypertensive episodes induce a higher information search.

Educational interventions, focusing on pharmacists' communication competencies, should be available to favor interaction skills resulting in a customer's augment of proactive information seeking behaviour.