Inter-rater Reliability of a Clinical Documentation Rubric Within Pharmacotherapy Problem-Based Learning Courses.

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Education
• Clinical Skills Assessment

Background:

• Effective clinical documentation is crucial for student pharmacists.
• Problem-based learning (PBL) requires reliable assessment tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the inter-rater reliability (IRR) of a clinical documentation rubric.
• To evaluate the rubric's consistency in grading pharmacotherapy PBL student submissions.

Main Methods:

• A clinical documentation rubric was adapted for pharmacotherapy PBL courses.
• Multiple faculty evaluators used the rubric to score 317 student submissions.
• Inter-class correlation coefficients (ICC) were calculated to determine IRR.

Main Results:

• The rubric demonstrated good overall IRR with an ICC of 0.7 across multiple graders.
• Mean scores remained consistent between initial and second evaluations (9.1, SD=0.9).
• No significant difference was found between evaluation scores.

Conclusions:

• The clinical documentation rubric is a reliable tool for assessing student pharmacists in PBL.
• The rubric provides consistent feedback, supporting continuous quality improvement in pharmacy education.