Student Pharmacists Self-Perceived Confidence in Communication Skills with Healthcare Practitioners Before and After a Seminar Course

Purpose: Competent pharmacy practice requires proficiency in communicating pharmacotherapy information, literature, and recommendations to healthcare professionals. Given the limited research on how these skills are taught, a seminar course in the third year of the curriculum designed to strengthen the above skills and abilities was evaluated. Method: The course was administered over a six-week period and consisted of 91 third year pharmacy students. Students were given a 24-question paper survey to assess self-perceived confidence at the beginning and end of the course. The questions consisted of a 5-point, Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Descriptive statistics and student t-test were used to assess student demographics and pre and post research questionnaire. Results: Sixty-eight of a possible 91 students (75% response rate) completed both the pre and post survey. The remaining students either did not participate or only filled out one of the two surveys. Overall, students slightly agreed they were confident in their communication and literature evaluation skills in the pre-course evaluation, with communicating drug interactions as the least confident area. Post-course, they were significantly more confident in all but five of 24 measured areas. By comparison, there was no statistically significant difference between any measured demographic (gender, age, previous degree, intern experience, and course grade). Conclusion: The Seminar course resulted in a positive change in students’ perception of confidence to communicate with healthcare professionals and ability to evaluate drug literature