Conceptual development of a measure to assess pharmacists' knowledge of herbal and dietary supplements.
OBJECTIVE
To describe the conceptual development of a measure for assessing pharmacist knowledge of herbal and dietary supplements.


METHODS
A standardized approach to constructing a multiple-choice competency examination following 8 pre-specified criteria (eg, specifying the target spectrum of herbal and dietary supplements) was used to create an item bank. The quality of each item was evaluated by 5 herbal and dietary supplement content experts based on specific criteria in 3 rounds of review.


RESULTS
From 122 initial items, 56 items were retained for the item bank representing 4 content areas: efficacy/effectiveness, safety, drug-supplement interactions, and regulation. The experts tended to agree that the constructed items represented a wide range of difficulty.


CONCLUSIONS
The initial development of a conceptually based item bank/measure of pharmacist herbal and dietary supplement knowledge lays the groundwork for a large-scale validation study. The measure should be useful as a standalone tool and as a component of a knowledge, attitude, and behavior survey for the assessment of pharmacist traits related to herbal and dietary supplements.
Lin
Hsiang-Wen
HW
Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research & Depts of Pharmacy Practice and Administration, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612-7230, USA.
Pickard
A Simon
AS
Mahady
Gail B
GB
Popovich
Nicholas G
NG
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D019587:Dietary Supplements / Q000009:adverse effects; D004347:Drug Interactions; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D041743:Herb-Drug Interactions; D006801:Humans; D007880:Legislation, Drug; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D010595:Pharmacists; D028321:Plant Preparations / Q000009:adverse effects; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D016730:Program Development; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
D028321:Plant Preparations