Selecting students with personal characteristics relevant to pharmaceutical care

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Summer 1999 by Wright, Sandra S, Miederhoff, Patrick A

Although a number of studies have investigated the relationship between personality variables and various indicators of academic performance in pharmacy school(9,10), very few studies have specifically examined the relationship between personal characteristics and performance in patient counseling situations. The lack of a valid personality assessment forces many pharmacy schools to rely on personal interviews and standard questions, such as "Why do you want to become a pharmacist?" to assess the extent to which applicants are interested in patient counseling during the admissions process. These strategies are not very likely to produce meaningful information, as many applicants realize that "helping people" is the expected response.

Goals of Present Study

The primary goal of this study is to examine the relationship between self-reported empathy and patient counseling skills among first-year pharmacy students. The predictive validity of two different instruments designed to measure empathy was tested. One instrument employed a forced-choice self-ratings format, similar to the one created by DuncanHewitt. The other instrument utilized a traditional, direct selfratings approach. It was predicted that the forced-choice instrument would be more strongly related to performance in a simulated patient counseling exercise than the direct self-rating instrument.

METHODS

All first-year PharmD students (N=99) in a required course, "Communication Skills in Pharmacy," at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Pharmacy were asked to participate in the study.

Overview

This study employed a classical "longitudinal prediction model", which is a common method for assessing the validity of an employee or student selection process(6). The first step in this model is the measurement of at least one "criteria" variable on a large group of candidates. Actual performance, known as the "criterion" variable, is measured at a later date. The relationship between the criteria and criterion behaviors are then assessed to determine the degree of the relationship. The stronger the relationship, the greater the predictive validity of the criteria variable. In this study, two measures of self-reported empathy (forced-choice self-descriptions versus direct selfratings) were employed as criteria variables, with performance in a simulated patient-pharmacist interaction as the criterion variable.

Materials

Forced-Choice Self-Description Inventory. This inventory, adapted from Duncan-Hewitt(9), includes two sections. In column 1, students listed at least three nonacademic activities in which they were involved that were most important to them, such as community service, employment, hobbies, sports, etc. In Column 2, students identified up to three qualities from a list of 111 descriptors which they felt each activity demonstrated. Empathy scores were calculated by summing the number of descriptors related to empathy that were chosen by each student. Total scores on this inventory could range from 0 to 3.