Establishing the Content Validity of a Student Pharmacist Patient Counseling Competency Assessment in Oncology

Abstract

Objective. The goal of this project was to establish content validity and describe internal consistency of a patient counseling competency assessment instrument used to evaluate student pharmacists practicing in an oncology setting.Methods. The study involved a modified e-Delphi panel of oncology clinical pharmacy specialists, clinical pharmacy generalists, and oncology pharmacy residents. Iterative rounds of the e-Delphi process were conducted until consensus was reached on most instrument items. Consensus was defined as agreement by at least 75% of participants that an item was or was not important.Results. The modified e-Delphi process included three rounds of responses from 13 panelists and resulted in a 35-item instrument with consensus reached on 33/35 (94%) of the items. All participants indicated that the assessment result options allowed them to indicate the student's level of competency either extremely well or very well.Conclusion. A modified e-Delphi method was used to validate a reliable instrument for the assessment of student pharmacist counseling abilities in an oncology setting. Similar methodology should be considered during the development of student assessment tools, especially for high-impact student pharmacist activities such as chemotherapeutic medication counseling.