Developing Pharmacy Student Communication Skills through Role-Playing and Active Learning

Abstract

Objective. To evaluate the impact on pharmacy students of a communication course, which used roleplaying to develop active-learning skills. Design. Students role-playing pharmacists in patient care scenarios were critiqued by students and pharmacist faculty members. Grading was performed using the rubric inspired by Bruce Berger's Communication Skills for Pharmacists. Written skills were evaluated using student written critique questionnaires. Students completed precourse and postcourse self-assessment surveys. Preceptor evaluations were analyzed for course impact. Assessment. Students demonstrated improvement in oral skills based on role-play scores (45.87/50) after practice sessions. The average score based on the student questionnaire was 9.31/10. Gain was demonstrated in all defined course objectives. Impact on introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) communication objectives was insignificant. Student evaluations for course and teaching strategy reflected a high average. Conclusion. Study results demonstrated improvement in oral and written communication skills that may help improve interprofessional teamwork between pharmacists and other health care providers. INTRODUCTIONSuccess as a practitioner in any health care profession is partly based on effective communication and listening skills. One of the primary roles of a pharmacist is to serve as an active communicator with patients, other health professionals, and the public.1 For student pharmacists, developing competence in communication is as pivotal as developing their knowledge base and clinical skills in integrated therapeutics and pharmacy practice.2,3 Both the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) Standards and Guidelines Version 2.0 and the Center for Advancement of Pharmacy Education (CAPE) emphasize that student pharmacists must achieve the ability to provide patient care in cooperation with an interprofessional health care team.4,5 Specifically, ACPE Standard 12 states, "Pharmacy graduates must be able to communicate and collaborate with patients, care givers, physicians, nurses, other health care providers, policy makers, members of the community, and administrative and support personnel to engender a team approach to patient care."4 The literature also promotes that pharmacy education include enhancing student communication skills.1 Nevertheless, challenges remain in designing an effective course that provides students with the essential knowledge and skills for communication compentency.1 Student pharmacists may not recognize their verbal communication deficiencies and need to be taught skills to improve them. 6 Additionally, communication course content may lack national consistency.7 In order to overcome these challenges, a progressive curriculum that addresses developing communication skills would help programs comply with various industry standards. 7A literature review did yield useful techniques to improve student pharmacists' communication skills. Roleplaying or improvisational tasks as part of the curriculum to...

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“…Developing an instrument representing different characteristics of teacher learning in ELT context for the current pharmacy education is important. There is a need to provide better language development opportunities for pharmacy graduates to enable them to perform as quality medical professionals (Kimberlin, 2006;Luiz Adrian, Zeszotarski, & Ma, 2015). Many studies have reported the application of different languagerelated scales to measure the students' performance level in pharmacy (Bradshaw, Tomany-Korman, & Flores, 2007;Dilworth, Mott, & Young, 2009;Schwappach, Massetti, & Gehring, 2012).…”

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