Mafinejad Mahboobeh Khabaz, Rastegarpanah Mansoor, Moosavi Fereshteh, Shirazi Mandana
Education Development Center, Health Professions Education Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Clinical Pharmacy Department, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
J Res Pharm Pract. 2017 Apr-Jun;6(2):83-88. doi: 10.4103/jrpp.JRPP_17_20.
The objective of this study is to describe the process of training valid simulated patients (SPs) for assessing communication and counseling skills of pharmacy students' performance.
This is a cross-sectional and correlational study. Psychometric properties of checklist and SPs' portrayals and their filling of the checklist regarding assessing pharmacy students were assessed. Five SPs who were working in the simulated patient's pool were volunteered to take part in the project, which one of the SPs failed. Three scenarios, along with corresponding checklists, were developed based on the usual medications of different diseases consisting of asthma, respiratory infections, and osteoporosis. The SPs' role-play performance was video-recorded and rated independently by two experts according to an observational rating scale to assess validity. The role-play was repeated after 1 week with the same scenario and the same doctor, to assess test-retest reliability. The inter-rater agreement between SPs and experts was determined by calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient and kappa coefficient.
The four eligible SPs were all women, with an average age of 37 years. The correlation between mean scores of raters and mean scores of SPs was 0.91 and 0.85, respectively. The Pearson's correlation between mean scores of raters with SPs was 0.75. The checklists' reliability, Cronbach's alpha, was calculated to be 0.72. The measured weighted Cohen's kappa for the ratings of by each SP, and the gold standard was between 0.53 and 0.57, indicating a moderate agreement. The inter-rater reliability kappa coefficient between raters was 0.75 ( = 0.01).
The authors have demonstrated the technique of using standardized patients to evaluate communication and counseling skills of pharmacy students. The findings indicated that trained SPs can be used as an effective tool to assess pharmacy students' communication and counseling skills.
本研究的目的是描述培训有效模拟患者（SPs）以评估药学专业学生沟通和咨询技能表现的过程。
这是一项横断面相关性研究。评估了用于评估药学专业学生的检查表和模拟患者描述的心理测量特性，以及他们填写检查表的情况。五名在模拟患者库工作的模拟患者自愿参与该项目，其中一名模拟患者未通过。根据哮喘、呼吸道感染和骨质疏松症等不同疾病的常用药物制定了三个场景及相应的检查表。模拟患者的角色扮演表现由两名专家根据观察评分量表进行视频记录和独立评分以评估有效性。1周后使用相同场景和相同医生重复角色扮演，以评估重测信度。通过计算组内相关系数和kappa系数来确定模拟患者与专家之间的评分者间一致性。
四名符合条件的模拟患者均为女性，平均年龄37岁。评分者的平均得分与模拟患者的平均得分之间的相关性分别为0.91和0.85。评分者与模拟患者的平均得分之间的Pearson相关性为0.75。检查表的信度，即Cronbach's alpha，计算得出为0.72。每个模拟患者评分与金标准之间测得的加权Cohen's kappa在0.53至0.57之间，表明一致性中等。评分者之间的评分者信度kappa系数为0.75（ = 0.01）。
作者展示了使用标准化患者评估药学专业学生沟通和咨询技能的技术。研究结果表明，经过培训的模拟患者可作为评估药学专业学生沟通和咨询技能的有效工具。
