An instrument to evaluate pharmacists' patient counseling on herbal and dietary supplements

To develop a measure of pharmacists' patient counseling on herbal and dietary supplements.

A systematic process was used for item generation, testing, and validation of a measure of pharmacists counseling on herbal and dietary supplements. Because a pharmacist-patient encounter may or may not identify an indication for taking an herb or dietary supplement, the instrument was bifurcated into 2 distinct components: (1) patient counseling in general; and (2) patient counseling related to herbal and dietary supplements.

The instrument demonstrated high reliability and desirable construct validity. After adjusting for item difficulty, we found that pharmacists tended to provide more general patient counseling than counseling related to herbal and dietary supplements.

This instrument can be applied to assess the quality of counseling provided by pharmacists and pharmacy students, and the outcomes of pharmacist and pharmacy student education on herbal and dietary supplements.