A Standardized Patient Counseling Rubric for a Pharmaceutical Care and Communications Course

Objective. To restructure a required pharmaceutical care and communications course to place greater emphasis on communication skills and include a high-stakes assessment. Design. A standardized counseling rubric was developed for use throughout the pharmacy curriculum and the counseling laboratory practicals were changed to high-stakes assessments. Assessment. An annual mid-semester and end-of-semester high-stakes patient-counseling objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) conducted prior to and after revision of the course and counseling rubric documented improvements in students’ scores. Performance on the post-course annual assessment patient counseling OSCE improved compared to that on the pre-course (p,0.001). Conclusion. The 2010 course revision improved students’ medication counseling abilities and readiness to practice. Major course revisions should be undertaken only after input from all stakeholders and with data to support the need for change

Taxon K, a complex within the Burkholderia cepacia complex, comprises at least two novel species, Burkholderia contaminans sp nov and Burkholderia lata sp nov.

The aim of the present study was to re-examine the taxonomic position and structure of taxon K (also known as group K) within the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc). For this purpose, a representative set of strains was examined by a traditional polyphasic taxonomic approach, by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis and by analysis of available whole-genome sequences. Analysis of the recA gene sequence revealed three different lineages, designated recA-I recA-II and recA-III. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments demonstrated that recA-I and recA-II isolates each represented a single novel species. However, DNA-DNA hybridization values of recA-II strains towards recA-III strains and among recA-III strains were at the threshold level for species delineation. By MLST, recA-I isolates were clearly distinguished from the others and represented a distinct lineage referred to as MLST-I, whereas recA-II and recA-III isolates formed a second MLST lineage referred to as MLST-II. A divergence value of 3.5% was obtained when MLST-I was compared with MLST-II. The internal level of concatenated sequence divergence within MLST-I and MLST-II was 1.4 and 2.7%, respectively; by comparison with the level of concatenated sequence divergence in established Bcc species, these data demonstrate that the MLST-I and MLST-II lineages represent two distinct species within the Bcc. The latter conclusion was supported by comparison of the whole-genome average nucleotide identity (ANI) level of MLST-I and MLST-II strains with strains of established Bcc species and by a whole-genome-based phylogenetic analysis. We formally propose to classify taxon K bacteria from the MLST-I and MLST-II lineages as Burkholderia contaminans sp. nov. (with strain J2956(T) =LMG 23361(T) =CCUG 55526(T) as the type strain) and Burkholderia lata sp. nov. (with strain 383(T) =ATCC 17760(T) =LMG 22485(T) =CCUG 55525(T) as the type strain), respectively. The MLST approach was confirmed as a valuable instrument in polyphasic taxonomic studies; more importantly, the cumulative data for about 1000 Bcc isolates analysed demonstrate that the 3% concatenated sequence divergence level correlates with the 70% DNA-DNA hybridization or 95% whole-genome ANI threshold levels for species delineation