Adaptation and psychometric validation of a scale to assess student pharmacists' beliefs in simplifying complicated medication regimens

To validate a scale in order to identify the most relevant survey constructs to measure student pharmacists' beliefs of providing a novel cognitive service of simplifying complicated medication regimens of community dwelling patients using a pill card.

A pre-existing scale was used to construct an adapted questionnaire in the context of simplifying complicated drug regimens in patients taking >five Rx meds daily. The adapted 14-item questionnaire was administered to 126 student pharmacists immediately after they performed a mandatory community pharmacy advanced pharmacy practice experience (APPE) exercise to simplify complicated drug regimens of patients. All students had rehearsed this service with standardized patients before their APPEs assignment. In this APPE assignment the student pharmacists consolidated the dose timings of the daily medications while attempting to improve their likelihood of efficacy and reduce their risk of adverse events. The psychometric properties of the adapted questionnaire were assessed using parallel analysis and principal component analysis. Internal consistency was established using Cronbach's α.

Out of 126 students, 116 (92%) responded to the questionnaire. Factor analysis produced a 3-factor solution of the 14-item scale which accounted for 56% of the explained variance. The factors relate to self-efficacy (α = 0.956), intention to practice (α = 0.89) and mattering (α = 0.885). The overall internal consistency as measured by Cronbach's α was 0.936. The mean values obtained using these scales were 6.01 ± 0.823, 4.88 ± 0.742, and 4.45 ± 0.556, respectively, indicating stronger beliefs in this cognitive service.

The adapted 14-question instrument can be used to reliably measure the self-efficacy, intention and mattering of fourth-year student pharmacists who can simplify complicated drug regimens by consolidating routinely prescribed medications.