Enhancing Communication Competencies: A Model for Pharmacy and Writing and Communication Center Partnerships

While pharmacy graduate programs often include communications-focused courses, writing and verbal and nonverbal communication skills are not often emphasized in other courses. As a result, students often leave graduate programs underprepared for the interpersonal communication that takes place in pharmacy practice settings. To enhance students’ communication skills, this chapter provides a model for writing in the health professions that integrates communication skills across the curriculum (beyond a single course). To supplement discipline-specific knowledge faculty in the health professions already possess, this chapter argues that pharmacy programs should partner with writing and communication centers in order to enhance student writing, as well as verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Using a 2019 and 2020 Pharmacy Applications course for PharmD students as its focus, the authors model how to build assignments and activities that enhance writing and communication skills over time and in different ways.