Teaching and counselling behaviour: an applied study with community pharmacists

Continuing education aims at improving practice. In this article, three mai n research questions are addressed: Which methodology is optimal to improve counselling behaviour? Are learning outcomes influenced by learning style? Does knowing imply doing? Four educational methods, transferring information on cough medicines, are assessed: a lecture, an interactive workshop, an audiocassette and a textbo ok. Attendants of the first three methods also received the textbook. Pharm acists completed a reaming-style inventory in addition to a pretest. After the instruction phase, they were interviewed by telephone (post-test). We a lso evaluated the counselling behaviour by an 'incognito' visit to particip ants as well as to controls. Seventy-eight pharmacists participated. Their learning-style cannot be rela ted to the results of pre-or posttest. Each educational method improved the level of knowledge significantly, but none of them proved to be better tha n the others. The pharmacists who in addition read the textbook, acquired m ore knowledge than those who did not. Self-study at home led to more fundam ental rather than practical knowledge. Improving knowledge does not result in better counselling: 75% of the pharmacists asked only one question, espe cially concerning the type of cough. However 9 out of 10 mentioned how to u se the drug. About half of the pharmacists told the patient about the actio n of the medicine. Other items were hardly ever mentioned. There was no dif ference in counselling behaviour between the intervention group and group o f pharmacists who did not attend the course. This investigation does not reveal any particular method of in-service trai ning as being more efficient. Active use of self-study materials helps to i mprove pharmacological knowledge. Implementing educational strategies to im prove counselling behaviour remains a future aim.