Assessment of Student Self-care Counseling Skill Progression Across a Semester

Objectives: To assess the progression of student self-care counseling skills across 9 weekly counseling sessions in a pharmacy practice skills lab. Method: P1 students took a 3 credit hour self-care course during the fall 2014 semester. After they learned a self-care topic, the following week they practiced counseling on the topic in a pharmacy practice lab with a P2 student evaluator. The P2 student evaluator then provided formative feedback using a rubric. The 10-item, 4-point Likert-type rubric (1=Unsatisfactory, 4=Commendable, Cronbach’s alpha=0.792, score range=10-40) was utilized across 9 counseling exercises to evaluate student patient interaction and self-care counseling skills after IRB approval. Changes from Week 1 to 9 as well as changes across all 9 sessions were analyzed using a Wilcoxon and a Friedman test, respectively. Results:Student total scores significantly improved from Week 1 (30.03±7.11) to Week 9 (36.29±6.60) as well as across all 9 sessions (p Implications: Giving students the opportunity to practice their self-care counseling skills after learning the relevant content in the prior week improved their ability to perform self-care counseling at the end of the semester. Since self-care counseling is an important part of pharmacy practice, incorporating many opportunities to practice may be beneficial