Audio taping simulated patient encounters in community pharmacy to enhance the reliability of assessments.

Objectives: To assess whether audio taping simulated patient interactions can improve the reliability of manually documented data and result in more accurate assessments.

Methods: Over a 3-month period, 1340 simulated patient visits were made to community pharmacies. Following the encounters, data gathered by the simulated patient were relayed to a coordinator who completed a rating form. Data recorded on the forms were later compared to an audiotape of the interaction. Corrections were tallied and reasons for making them were coded.

Results: Approximately 10% of cases required corrections, resulting in a 10%-20% modification in the pharmacy's total score. The difference between postcorrection and precorrection scores was significant.

Conclusions: Audio taping simulated patient visits enhances data integrity. Most corrections were required because of the simulated patients' poor recall abilities.