Selecting pharmacy students with appropriate communication skills

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Spring 2000 by Jones, Janet, Krass, Ines, Holder, Gerald M, Robinson, Rosalie A

To further strengthen the selection process, an interview may be incorporated to assess communication skills as well as non-cognitive factors such as motivation and empathic behavior. However, to gain substantial value, it should be structured(34,35). While selection interviews are effective, they are necessarily time consuming and therefore expensive for faculty staff and for the profession. The interview should be scored and incorporated into a selection algorithm or alternatively, it should be used as a final step to confirm or refuse an offer. The structured interview enables a more informed choice of students with desirable qualities, such as those with appropriate interpersonal attributes, knowledge of the profession and good spoken and aural communication abilities. A major goal of pharmacy education is surely to produce graduates with these qualities and attributes.

Although we did not use the interview as part of the selection process, the use of the post admission interview in this study for diagnostic purposes still yielded useful information about students' communication skills. This information was reinforced by the other measures and enabled pharmacy staff to have an accurate profile of students' skills. It also enabled staff in pharmacy to collaborate with learning support services to introduce timely and appropriate support for those students diagnosed with weaknesses.

CONCLUSION

Tertiary institutions have the primary responsibility to set entry standards and admission procedures fox pharmacy and other courses. In doing so, they address the necessity to choose academically more capable applicants who are best suited to their chosen profession or for the degree. As well, it is desirable that the procedures used are transparent and equitable. The conflict that arises in selecting and assembling these procedures is one of accuracy versus expediency. Institutions wish to minimize waste due to attrition, failure leading to enrolments for more than the minimum time and loss of graduates from a profession for which individuals find themselves unsuited or dissatisfied. The application of multiple selection criteria may reduce wastage but the procedures incorporated into the processes of student selection must address the cost effectiveness of the effort.

The present study has shown that the inclusion of tests or measures of communication skills within a student selection paradigm is likely to identify those who possess superior abilities and are more likely to succeed. Of the three measures studied, the STAT is the most easily and economically administered and has now been incorporated into pharmacy student selection procedures at the University of Sydney. The success in teaching the communication aspects of the course to appropriately selected students can be expected to be greater. It will be important to assess in a longitudinal study the success of such a strategy in producing more suitable practitioners for the pharmacy profession in the future.