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Express - Empowering Pharmacy Students to Develop their Communication Skills—
Efi Mantzourani and Mat Smith
In recent years there has
been a redefinition of the role
of a healthcare professional
from one that is predominantly technical to one that is patient-centred and multidisciplinary. A critical face to this
new role is effective communication with patients as well
as across healthcare disciplines. Despite this, a number
of recent reports (Francis
2013, Keogh 2013, Andrews
2014) have highlighted that
poor communication has
compromised the health of
patients; it is clear then that
effective communication remains an issue despite efforts
to introduce communications
‘training’ in undergraduate
education prompted by the
Nuffield Committee of Enquiry
into pharmacy (1986).
Here in Cardiff School Pharmacy we have witnessed an
increasing trend of students
choosing
communication
skills as a primary focus in
their Personal Development
Portfolio, particularly following
work-based learning placements where they are exposed to patients and other
healthcare practitioners in an
authentic environment. This
marries with student and
practitioner feedback following placements that there is a
real or perceived lack of preparedness in communication
skills particularly around listening and non-verbal communication – skills that are
difficult to teach in the classroom. Whilst we have aligned
our teaching to the Nuffield
report recommendations, our
students’ reflections have
precipitated a desire to shift
from
traditional
didactic
teaching to support them further in their journey towards
improving their communication skills and becoming a
patient-centred professional.
Critically this involves codevelopment of support material with students.
To enable this we engaged
with our student body to
collaboratively develop a
range of self-paced pharmacist-patient communication videos and e-learning
packages that sat alongside
a student-led, interactive
plenary that in total offers
flexible blended learning in
communication skills. Critically these material were
centred around authentic
pharmacist-patient interactions which contrasts to
traditional (but artificial) role
-playing between students.
Ultimately, the package
was designed around the
central idea that students
should reflect on their own
skills to develop mastery of
their communication skills
affording professional development.
Subsequently theses resources were evaluated
using an online survey and
through focus groups with
students to understand
whether they met the intended learning outcomes.
These discussions revealed
a high degree of satisfaction with the resources and
students felt that their level
of preparedness for th