Development of Components and Behavioral Indicators of Communication Skills in Pharmacy Practice for Pharmacy Students

Abstract

The role of the pharmacist as a communicator of drug information and advice between patients and the community is recognized as a vital role of a pharmacist. Pharmacy education is changing to reflect this role, and capable of equipping students with the necessary knowledge and skills for effective com­munication. The objectives of this research were to synthesize the components and behavioral indicators of communication skills in pharmacy practice (CSP) for pharmacy students and to qualify the compo­nents and behavioral indicators that were created by researcher. It was conducted under a qualitative and documentary research in 4 phases: (1) studying of circumstances and problems toward CSP by in-depth interview of 10 experts, ( 2) studying the related documents and research for synthesizing the compo­nents and behavioral indicators of CSP by documentary research and content analysis, (3) the assessment of qualified components and behavioral indicators of CSP by 10 experts, and (4) the reliability test of the instrument by cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The result were as follows: (1) two components of CSP were identified, namely, patient-centered communication skills and non-verbal communication skills which included twelve items of behavioral indicators of CSP, (2) the score of content validity of research instrument was 0.98, and (3) the instrument reliability coefficient was 0.96. In conclusion, pharmacy education organizations may further apply this tool to assess the communication skills of their students for learning and apprentice.