Assessing student confidence in interprofessional communication during primary care advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPEs)

Background and purpose: Students must have experience communicating and interacting with healthcare professionals throughout pharmacy school curricula to effectively develop inter-professional communication abilities and confidence. This study's purpose was to assess student confidence in interprofessional communication utilizing a rubric and checklist inspired by the situation-background-assessment-recommendation (SBAR) technique throughout five-week pri-mary care advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPEs). Educational activity and setting: A six-item rubric was created for student self-evaluation of in-terprofessional communication throughout their APPE. Students completed the rubric twice to evaluate change in confidence. Additionally, a pre-post rotation survey was developed to assess students' comfort level rounding with healthcare professionals and interacting/intervening with other healthcare professionals to address a medication-related problem. A paired t-test was used to evaluate changes in perceived student confidence in rubric self-evaluations and pre-and post-APPE surveys. Findings: From May 2017 to April 2019, 93 students completed primary care APPEs with faculty authors, and 181 encounters were self-evaluated using the rubric. Forty-eight students completed all rubric sections twice; their mean self-evaluation score increased significantly from 15.25/18 to 17.10/18 (P < .001). Self-evaluation scores increased significantly on all rubric sections (P < .05) except professional language (P = .133). Student comfort level rounding with healthcare professionals and interacting/intervening with healthcare professionals to address a medication-related problem increased significantly (P < .001). Summary: Interprofessional communication practice, preceptor observations and feedback, and utilization of an interprofessional SBAR-inspired communication rubric contributed to im-proved student confidence in making patient care recommendations to physicians.