The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7248 p661
10 May 2003

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Some good and some bad chapters — too paternalistic and dictatorial in parts

'Communication skills for pharmacists: building relationships, improving patient care', by Bruce B. Berger. Pp x+166. Price $45. Washington DC: American Pharmaceutical Association; 2002. ISBN 1 58212 042 0

Good communication skills are vitally important in the practice of pharmacy so it is always pleasing to see a new book on the subject directed at a pharmacy audience. The first chapter provides a comprehensive overview of pharmaceutical care, what it is and how it might be practised. The book holds out much hope.

Individually the chapters are good, some very good. Chapter eight, for example, provides an excellent overview of how change might be effected in patients. Some chapters, however, are less impressive and seem to have been rushed or suggest that the author has not the command of the subject necessary. The chapter on patient counselling should be retitled "Explaining skills". The chapters do not quite fit together. This is because the book does not communicate easily with a United Kingdom reader. Winston Churchill's quip that Britain and America are "two nations separated by a common language" springs to mind.

In parts the text is much too sycophantic and saccharine while being too paternalistic and dictatorial in others. The reader is alienated with banal, trite examples from practice that are supposed to underpin the communication points, but do not. Non-verbal communication, as the author rightly states, conveys 93 per cent of the message. Sadly this important topic is relegated to a few pages at the end of the book.

Terry Maguire