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 PharmD curricula. The objective of this narrative review was 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, OSCE, or experiential settings (n=18). The communication tasks (e.g., patient counseling, medication history taking, SOAP notes), contexts (e.g., community pharmacy), and scales of measurement varied for each instrument.

Summary: While 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.