An instrument to objectively measure pharmacist professionalism as an outcome: a pilot study

Historically, academic success has been a major outcome for evaluating the effectiveness of pharmacy education programs and admission criteria. In other words, students' overall grades and/or specific course grades have determined academic success. However, there is a disconnection between students' grades and their performance during practicums or in practice. It was postulated that professionalism might be an alternative outcome for measuring graduates' abilities.

To construct an objective measure of professional attitudes and behaviours for recently graduated pharmacists.

A self-report instrument was developed using the American Board of Internal Medicine's 6-tenet definition of professionalism. Four months after completing the doctor of pharmacy degree (PharmD), pharmacists were asked to complete an online version of the professionalism instrument. The Rasch Measurement Model (Winsteps, Chicago, Illinois) was used to construct a measure from the responses. Using data that fit the model, the Rasch Measurement Model can build the interval-level measurements needed for future inferential statistical interpretations of ordinal-level data gathered with this instrument.

Twenty-seven PharmD graduates completed the 15-item instrument. The Rasch Measurement Model was used to construct continuous, linear measures of pharmacist professionalism from these instrument rating scale data. Most of the scales functioned without modification, but 2 of the scales functioned only after being collapsed. One person and one item "misfit" the Rasch Measurement Model and were omitted from the analysis. After these adjustments, the data fit the model well. As a measurement tool, this instrument was overwhelmingly unidimensional; the linear model explained 99.9% of the variation in the data using principal contrast analysis. Item separation was 3.64 logits, person separation was 2.31 logits, and reliability was 0.93 by Cronbach's α.

The Rasch Measurement Model was used to construct an objective measure of pharmacists' professionalism. The results of this pilot project suggest a promising outcome measure for evaluating pharmacy graduates soon after completion of university.