Design and Validation of Patient-Centered Communication Tools (PaCT) to Measure Students' Communication Skills

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Education
• Communication Skills Assessment
• Healthcare Professional Training

Background:

• Effective pharmacist-patient communication is crucial for quality healthcare.
• Existing assessment tools may not comprehensively capture student pharmacist communication abilities.
• There is a need for a validated instrument tailored to this specific educational context.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a comprehensive instrument for assessing student pharmacist-patient communication skills.
• To establish the face, content, construct, concurrent, and predictive validity of the instrument.
• To determine the reliability and inter-rater reliability of the developed assessment tool.

Main Methods:

• A multi-step approach involving expert review, student feedback, and comparative analyses was employed.
• Validity was assessed through expert evaluation (face, content), student input (construct), and comparisons with existing rubrics (concurrent) and coursework (predictive).
• Reliability and inter-rater reliability were rigorously tested with trained faculty assessors.

Main Results:

• The developed instrument, Patient-centered Communication Tools (PaCT), demonstrated face and content validity.
• PaCT showed significant findings in reliability testing and performed well when compared to an alternate rubric.
• Multiple correlation tests confirmed the instrument's validity and reliability.

Conclusions:

• Patient-centered Communication Tools (PaCT) is a validated and reliable instrument for assessing student pharmacist communication skills.
• The tool provides a useful and accurate method for evaluating essential communication competencies in pharmacy education.
• PaCT can aid in improving the quality of pharmacist-patient interactions through targeted skill assessment.