Drug Information Questions Posed to Community Pharmacy Advanced Practice Experience Students

Abstract

Outcomes includes the provision of drug information to health care professionals and the public as one of the many outcomes pharmacy graduates should have mastered upon completion of the curriculum. 1 Due to their accessibility, community pharmacists receive numerous drug information questions from patients. Therefore, the ability to evaluate a health-related inquiry and provide an appropriate response to the requestor in a community pharmacy setting is an essential skill to develop. Faculty members should ensure that students are provided with the opportunity to develop this practicebased outcome during components of the didactic and experiential curricula.To address this, the Albany College of Pharmacy Community Pharmacy Advanced Practice Experiences (CPAPEs) require students to document drug information requests. 2 This activity allows students to practice the desired CAPE outcome while enhancing their documentation skills. It also enables preceptors and experiential education faculty members to review activities occurring at the practice site for quality assurance purposes.Previous studies describing drug information inquiries and resources commonly used in the community pharmacy setting employed survey techniques to determine the types of inquiries received, and/or preceded the availability of electronic drug information resources. [3][4][5][6] These data are limited to older publications from the 1970s to 1990s. As community pharmacy practice and drug information resources have advanced since that time, a more current evaluation of drug information inquiries and resources is needed to guide faculty members when developing a curriculum to adequately prepare pharmacy graduates and to identify the drug information resource needs of community pharmacy experi- Objective. To document drug information questions received by students during community pharmacy advanced practice experiences (CPAPEs) in order to categorize the types of inquiries received and to identify the references used and the student-reported usefulness of those resources. Methods. Fifty-one CPAPE students were asked to document 10 drug information questions on a standard form, indicating the references used and the usefulness of that resource. The data were entered into a database. Results. Most of the 272 inquiries documented concerned prescription medications and were initiated by patients (55%) or pharmacists (35%). Adverse events (n = 78) and pharmacotherapy (n = 73) were the most frequent question classifications encountered. The most common references cited were Micromedex (Thompson Scientific and Health Care Group, Greenwood Village, Co), Drug Facts and Comparisons (Facts and Comparisons, St. Louis, Mo), and package inserts. Although Micromedex and package inserts were found useful in 71% and 64% of inquiries, respectively, Drug Facts and Comparisons was deemed not useful 53% of the time. Conclusions. Several of the most useful references identified by students may not be readily available at community pharmacy sites. Student documentatio...

Medicine-related questions handled by community pharmacists: an exploratory study

“…However, little research has been conducted to determine the nature of medicine‐related questions that community pharmacies handle, nor the validity of the responses 6 . Research data relating to medicine call handling seem to be limited to specialist services 7 or national drug information centres 8 …”

Preparing Students for Community Pharmacy Practice During a Drug Information Advanced Practice Experience

“…Study results indicated questions from consumers were most likely to be classified as adverse drug reactions, while questions from health professionals were likely to be classified as dosage and drug administration. 8 A survey of 162 community and independent pharmacies in Louisiana reported nonprescription medications, adverse drug reactions, and contraindications/warning questions as the top 3 types of questions received from the public and other health professionals. 10 Comparison of the characteristics of communitybased drug information questions obtained from the present survey and characteristics of questions received at an academic drug information center revealed notable differences.…”

“…6,7 Investigators of a recently published study evaluated the types of questions received by pharmacy students completing an APPE in community pharmacy; however, some of the questions received by the students participating in the study were contrived for the practice experience and may not reflect true consumer-based questions. 8 To our knowledge no comparative analysis has been published in the literature examining potential differences between academic training and career experiences in drug information. Therefore, the primary objective of the present study was to determine the characteristics of communitybased drug information requests compared to requests received at an academic drug information center.…”

Finding and Using Readily Available Sources of Assessment Data

“…35 Additionally, an evaluation of drug information questions answered during community advanced pharmacy practice experiences were evaluated to determine the types of questions asked and the resources students used to answer those questions. 36 These data were used to enhance curricular development of the needed skills earlier in the curriculum and to determine the availability of the resources needed to answer the questions posed by patients and health care professionals.…”