Tools for Assessing Communication in Pharmacy Education: Review and Recommendations

Objectives: Well-developed and finely tuned communication skills are foundational for pharmacists and should be at the core of Doctor of Pharmacy curricula. This narrative review aimed to identify and summarize useful instruments for pharmacy educators interested in assessing communication skills.

Findings: Fifty-seven studies were evaluated. Eighteen studies with communication assessment instruments that were readily available and deemed useful by the research team were included for further review. Most focused on oral communication (n = 15), included pharmacy students as the communicators (n = 14), and utilized instructors as the assessors in the didactic, simulation, objective structured clinical examination, or experiential settings (n = 18). The communication tasks (eg, patient counseling; medication history taking; subjective, objective, assessment, plan notes), contexts (eg, community pharmacy), and scales of measurement varied for each instrument.

Summary: Although communication is a critical skill for pharmacy students, its assessment is complicated by the potential need for various types of assessors, communication tasks, and contexts. This review describes a set of useful assessment instruments to aid pharmacy educators in selecting an appropriate tool or adapting an existing one to meet their course or program assessment needs.