Improving pharmacy counselling skills: an interdisciplinary model of support for students with English as an additional language

Objectives: The pilot project, described in this paper, targeted English as an additional language (EAL) students to facilitate their development of patient counselling communication skills. Methods: An interdisciplinary content-based model was developed drawing on an interactional sociolinguistic framework to map language use valued in pharmacy counselling. Evaluation included analysis of successive self-assessments and surveys of students, surveys of teaching staff and final test results. Key findings: Evaluation indicated that the interdisciplinary model was highly successful in improving EAL students' competency in pharmacy counselling. Conclusions: The model may have possible wider application for education in health professional programmes.