Patient opinions on medicine-use review: exploring an expanding role of community pharmacists

Abstract

BackgroundCurrent evidence supports the benefit of medicine-use review (MUR) for the safe and effective use of medicines. However, little is known about opinions of consumers regarding their preference for undertaking MUR, especially in the developing world, eg, in some Asian countries. We aimed to explore patients’ opinions about potential MUR and other enhanced services provided by community pharmacists.Patients and methodsA qualitative study using focus groups was conducted at Naresuan University’s community pharmacy, Phitsanulok, Thailand. MUR-naïve patients were recruited from two pharmacies in Phitsanulok. All focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed.ResultsTwenty participants attended four focus groups. The following themes were identified: 1) requirement and need for the service, 2) accessibility and convenience of receiving the service, 3) pharmacist attributes needed in delivering the service, and 4) how to promote the use of MUR successfully. The majority of participants had poor understanding about their medicines and were interested in receiving a MUR service. Regarding accessibility, convenience and close proximity of pharmacies to homes were deemed to be supportive of participants to use the service. However, several potential barriers to uptake were identified: perceived difficulty on the part of recipients in making time to receive the service and the inconvenience of having to provide medicines/records of medicines to pharmacists. The following domains of pharmacists’ characteristics were viewed as supportive determinants: personality (friendliness and confidence in giving information) and attitude (willingness to provide the service and not commercially oriented). The participants suggested that promoting the services using a mix of strategies would increase an awareness of MUR service.ConclusionRecognizing the unmet needs of patients for information on their medicines provides a good opportunity for community pharmacists to offer an MUR service to ensure quality use of medicines in the community.

<p>Correlation Between Patients’ Medication Adherence and Their Psychological Contract with Hospital Pharmacists</p>

“…Patients also need to actively cooperate with the hospital pharmacists. 33 Relevant departments can strengthen education and publicity on the rational use of drugs by patients to improve patients’ sense of responsibility. 34 , 35 The mutual understanding and mutual respect between the hospital pharmacists and patients may be a key point for improving the patients’ medication adherence.…”

Knowledge and Practices of Community Pharmacists in Topical Dermatological Treatments

“…Young et al [ 13 ] found that pharmacists did not routinely direct patients to medicine information websites and thought leaflets might worry patients about possible side effects. Aimaurai et al [ 14 ] proposed that community pharmacists could offer a Medicines Use Review service to ensure the quality use of medicines in the community after recognizing the unmet needs of patients for information on medicine.…”

Engaging patients to access the community pharmacy medicine review service after discharge from hospital: a cross-sectional study in England

“…A potential facilitator proposed by our study participants was that they received an invitation for a dMUR from the pharmacist. This has been suggested as a means to increase uptake by others [29]. However, this would need to be facilitated by the routine sharing of discharge communication between the hospital and the community pharmacist.…”