title: Quality of pharmaceutical care at the pharmacy counter: patients' experiences versus video observation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Consumer Quality Index questionnaires are used to assess quality of care from patients' experiences.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To provide insight into the agreement about quality of pharmaceutical care, measured both by a patient questionnaire and video observations.
  
  
  METHODS
  Pharmaceutical encounters in four pharmacies were video-recorded. Patients completed a questionnaire based upon the Consumer Quality Index Pharmaceutical Care after the encounter containing questions about patients' experiences regarding information provision, medication counseling, and pharmacy staff's communication style. An observation protocol was used to code the recorded encounters. Agreement between video observation and patients' experiences was calculated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In total, 109 encounters were included for analysis. For the domains "medication counseling" and "communication style", agreement between patients' experiences and observations was very high (>90%). Less agreement (45%) was found for "information provision", which was rated more positive by patients compared to the observations, especially for the topic, encouragement of patients' questioning behavior.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A questionnaire is useful to assess the quality of medication counseling and pharmacy staff's communication style, but might be less suitable to evaluate information provision and pharmacy staff's encouragement of patients' questioning behavior. Although patients may believe that they have received all necessary information to use their new medicine, some information on specific instructions was not addressed during the encounter. When using questionnaires to get insight into information provision, observations of encounters are very informative to validate the patient questionnaires and make necessary adjustments.
authors.affiliation: Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Clinical Pharmacology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ellen S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Koster
authors.affiliation: Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Clinical Pharmacology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Lyda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Blom
authors.affiliation: Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Clinical Pharmacology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marloes R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Overbeeke
authors.affiliation: Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Clinical Pharmacology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Daphne
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Philbert
authors.affiliation: Netherlands Institute of Health Services Research (NIVEL), Utrecht, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marcia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vervloet
authors.affiliation: Netherlands Institute of Health Services Research (NIVEL), Utrecht, the Netherlands; National Health Care Institute, Diemen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Koopman
authors.affiliation: Netherlands Institute of Health Services Research (NIVEL), Utrecht, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Liset
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: van Dijk
keywords: CQI; community pharmacy; patient perspective; patient-provider communication; pharmaceutical care; video observation