Pharmacist interventions when responding to symptoms

Abstract

Community pharmacy provides an accessible healthcare service for patients with requests to treat minor illness. The aim of this study was to characterise presentation of symptoms and requests by patients for self-care in community pharmacy practice and to evaluate pharmacist’s intervention in self-care pharmacotherapy. In the first phase of the study, two pharmacies from each of the five Maltese districts (N=10) were randomly selected using stratified sampling. Two sessions of three-hour duration of non-participant observational studies were carried out. A data collection form was compiled to list down patient category, pharmacist intervention and organ system for which the request was made. For the second phase of the study, a focus group discussion with community pharmacists, healthcare professionals and laypeople was held online to explore pharmacist intervention during self-care. A thematic analysis was carried out to discuss and interpret emergent themes. From the data gathered, 154 requests for self-care were observed. The adult population was the most common patient group which frequented the pharmacy (49%). Symptoms or requests for skin conditions (25%) were the most frequent, followed by respiratory (19%), digestive (16%) and musculoskeletal (12%) systems. Out of 107 instances where pharmacists provided advice, pharmacological advice (68%) was the most frequently provided. From 117 instances where pharmacists asked questions, the most frequently asked question related to elaboration of symptoms (64%). Thematic analysis of the focus group discussion identified four main themes – the pharmacist’s role in self-care, information-gathering performed by the pharmacist, advice-giving in self-care requests and the quality of the pharmacist-patient intervention. This study highlighted the adult population as the most frequent population requesting self-care pharmacotherapy. Pharmacist intervention was widely observed during self-care requests while four main organ systems characterised symptom-based requests.