Characterisation of patient advice in community pharmacy

Abstract

Community pharmacists are in an ideal position to provide advice to patients due to easy accessibility within the community. The advice community pharmacists provide aims to enhance the rational use of medicines, thereby promoting safety, efficacy and optimising health outcomes. The aim of this study was to describe the type and frequency of patient advice requests provided in community pharmacy practice. In this observational prospective study 1000 patient encounters with the community pharmacist for advice/counselling over a twelve-week period were observed and recorded in a data collection form developed for the purpose of the study. The data collection form characterises patient advice as follows: responding to symptoms, lifestyle advice, medicine information medical devices, product recommendation, self-medication advice, waste disposal, signposting and medical referral. The time taken to address each encounter was recorded. Descriptive statistics are carried out to assess the type and frequency of patient advice encounters. The four most prominent pharmacist-patient advice were: Medicine information (n=903), responding to symptoms (n=595), lifestyle advice (n=585), and product recommendation (n=532). Other types of pharmacist patient advice were advice on medical devices (n=201), on waste disposal (n=47) and advice relating to signposting and medical referral (n= 86). The time taken to address patient’s advice needs during the pharmacist patients’ contacts of the most prominent advice groups had medicine information with 300 encounters between 3 and 7 minutes consisting of 50 encounters at 3minutes, 150 at 4minutes, 70 at 6minutes and 30 at 7minutes. Responding to symptoms had 212 encounters between 3 and 7 minutes with 20 encounters at 3 minutes, 132 at 4 minutes, 30 at 5 minutes and 30 at 7 minutes. Lifestyle advice had 162 encounters between 2 and 7 minutes with 30 encounters at 2 minutes, 70 at 3 minutes, 40 at 5 minutes and 22 at 7 minutes. Product recommendation which was least of the four had 170 encounters between 3 and 4 minutes with 50 encounters at 3 minutes and 120 encounters at 4 minutes. Characterisation of the provided advice to patients in this research study contributes to highlight the value of community pharmacist interventions in patient care in contributing to enhanced medication effectiveness, adherence and patient safety.