Developing and validating a tool to evaluate communication and patient counselling skills of pharmacy students: A pilot study

Introduction: Communication skills for pharmacy students are very important in their future practice as a pharmacist. But there are still some questions which remains about the evaluation of communication skills and measuring their outcomes in pharmacy students. Due to the lack of comprehensive and accurate tools for evaluating communication skills and pharmacists' consultation, this study intended to design and validate a tool to assess pharmacy students' performance in developing effective communication and consulting skills. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a communication and counselling skills tool for pharmacy students was developed and contextualised following three steps. Content validity of the tool was examined by seven experts through two round Delphi technique. Reliability of the tools was calculated by Cronbach's alpha. The inter-rater reliability between Simulated Patients (SPs) and experts was determined by calculating the intra-class correlation coefficient and kappa coefficient. Results: A tool with 22-item was developed. Cronbach's alpha for internal consistency was 0.72. The inter-rater reliability by the use of kappa coefficient test between raters and SPs was 0.75 (p=0.01). Reliability coefficients for instrument of this study were high and acceptable. Conclusion: Based on the findings of the research, developing appropriate and context-based tool for assessing pharmacists' communication and counselling skills is necessary. This tool can be a useful for evaluating communication and counselling skills of pharmacy students. The development and validation of the tool has been a positive prospect for researchers.