Experiences in Teaching and LearningComparing student self-assessments of global communication with trained faculty and standardized patient assessments
Section snippets
Background and purpose
Communication skills are found throughout all levels of Bloom's taxonomy of learning, incorporating lower and higher orders of thinking.1 Pharmacy students are taught how to communicate professionally from an early point in their pharmacy program to provide them with the skills for effective pharmaceutical care. At the College of Pharmacy, Qatar University (CPH-QU), the Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada (AFPC) educational outcomes and the National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory
Educational activity and setting
The CPH-QU offers a four year, undergraduate degree program that has been accredited by the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs (CCAPP). The CPH-QU curriculum incorporates a mandatory Professional Skills series through all four years of the program and aims to develop the practical skills of a pharmacist. Within this Professional Skills course, a Communications Module focused on patient counseling was introduced to first-year pharmacy students (P1) at CPH-QU in fall semester
Findings
All twenty-four P1 students at CPH-QU, four faculty members and four SPs participated in the communications module evaluation. All students were female as CPH-QU only enrolls females. All faculty members were full-time with an adjunct appointment at a local hospital. Two faculty members were female (50%) while three of the SPs were female (75%).
Faculty member and SP evaluators assigned 96 communication grades divided across four stations. The mean (±SD) communication scores from faculty member
Discussion
In this study, a standardized global communication assessment was used to assess the communications skills of P1 students, evaluate the ability of students to self-assess and compare their performance with those of faculty members and SPs. Student self-evaluated communication skills resulted in higher scores than those assigned by both faculty and SP evaluators. These results suggest that students early in their education may not fully realize their own strengths and, more particularly,
Summary
Having first year pharmacy students assess their own communication skills resulted in poor correlation and agreement with SP and faculty evaluators when using a quantitative evaluation scale. Standardized patient assessment of communication also resulted in unfavorable correlation and agreement with faculty assessment and student self-assessment. Further training of first year pharmacy students is needed to improve their ability to self-assess their communication skills after an interaction
Financial disclosures
None.
Conflicts of interest
None.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the faculty of pharmacy for supporting this project and the pharmacy students who participated in this study.
References (23)
- et al.
Changes in student performance and confidence with a standardized patient and standardized colleague interprofessional activity
Am J Pharm Educ
(2015) - et al.
Incorporating standardized colleague simulations in a clinical assessment course and evaluating the impact on interprofessional communication
Am J Pharm Educ
(2015) - et al.
Evaluating the accuracy of pharmacy students’ self-assessment skills
Am J Pharm Educ
(2007) - et al.
Peer- and self-grading compared to faculty grading
Am J Pharm Educ
(2011) - et al.
First-year pharmacy students’ self-assessment of communication skills and the impact of video review
Am J Pharm Educ
(2010) - et al.
A comparison of students’ self-assessments with faculty evaluations of their communication skills
Am J Pharm Educ
(2013) - et al.
Student and preceptor perception of performance in advanced pharmacy practice experiences
Am J Pharm Educ
(2005) - et al.
Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain
- et al.
Developing pharmacy student communication skills through role-playing and active learning
Am J Pharm Educ
(2015) - et al.
The impact of a standardized patient program on student learning of communication skills
Am J Pharm Educ
(2009)