Kunow C, Langer B. Simulated patient methodology as a “gold standard” in community pharmacy practice: Response to criticism. World J Methodol 2024; 14(2): 93026 [PMID: 38983662 DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v14.i2.93026]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Bernhard Langer, BSc, MSc, PhD, Professor, Department of Health, Nursing, Management, Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Brodaer Straße 2, Neubrandenburg 17033, Germany. langer@hs-nb.de
Research Domain of This Article
Pharmacology & Pharmacy
Article-Type of This Article
Letter to the Editor
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Methodol. Jun 20, 2024; 14(2): 93026 Published online Jun 20, 2024. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v14.i2.93026
Simulated patient methodology as a “gold standard” in community pharmacy practice: Response to criticism
Christian Kunow, Bernhard Langer
Christian Kunow, Bernhard Langer, Department of Health, Nursing, Management, Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Neubrandenburg 17033, Germany
Author contributions: Kunow C wrote and prepared the original draft; Langer B conceptualized the letter, and reviewed, validated and edited the original draft; Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Bernhard Langer, BSc, MSc, PhD, Professor, Department of Health, Nursing, Management, Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Brodaer Straße 2, Neubrandenburg 17033, Germany. langer@hs-nb.de
Received: February 16, 2024 Revised: April 28, 2024 Accepted: May 17, 2024 Published online: June 20, 2024 Processing time: 118 Days and 9.5 Hours
Abstract
The simulated patient methodology (SPM) is considered the “gold standard” as covert participatory observation. SPM is attracting increasing interest for the investigation of community pharmacy practice; however, there is criticism that SPM can only show a small picture of everyday pharmacy practice and therefore has limited external validity. On the one hand, a certain design and application of the SPM goes hand in hand with an increase in external validity. Even if, on the other hand, this occurs at the expense of internal validity due to the trade-off situation, the justified criticism of the SPM for investigating community pharmacy practice can be countered.
Core Tip: The simulated patient methodology (SPM) is considered the “gold standard” as covert participatory observation. SPM is attracting increasing interest for the investigation of community pharmacy practice. However, there is criticism that SPM can only show a small picture of everyday pharmacy practice. However, if the SPM is designed and applied in a certain way, this criticism can be countered.
