Validating tools for the monitoring of community pharmacy services

Abstract

Aim: To develop and validate tools with which to monitor the standards of professional services normally provided by community pharmacists and which measure the impact of their intervention on patient care.

Design: Five tools based on a quantitative measurement system were established and their validity evaluated by psychometric testing.

Subjects and settings: A group of 10 community pharmacies from 184 pharmacies in Malta were selected by stratified random sampling.

Outcome measures: Applicability and practicality of the tools to be used by the direct method of observation in community pharmacies, face and content validity, inter-rater reliability.

Results: Raters said that they did not find difficulty documenting activities of any pharmacist using the tools. The level of agreement among the panel members examining the tools for face and content validity (review of measuring insistent to ensure that it measures what it is intended to measure) was high (Kendall coefficient of concordance <0.98, P<0.002). The inter-rater correlation (0.70) and internal consistency (et>0.80) were high for all five tools.

Conclusions: The five tools are user-friendly, valid and reliable, and can be used by community pharmacists to confirm the needs of their professional service and its impact on patient care.