Identifying barriers to the implementation of an electronic system designed for documenting clinical interventions within community pharmacies

Objective. Hospital admissions due to drug-related problems (ORPs) remain a large problem within Australia. Previous studies showed that an electronic system to document the DRPs detected in community pharmacy was needed and may increase the number of interventions undertaken. The third iteration of the PROMISe project (Pharmacy Recording of Medication Incidents and Services electronically) aims to identify the barriers of implementation prior to a national roll-out of this system. Methods. Three focus groups were conducted to explore barriers to implementation of the electronic documentation system. The first focus group consisting of earlier PROMISe participants was conducted to describe the previously experienced barriers prior to the trial. The second focus group was conducted during the trial with owners/managers from the participating pharmacies to identify the barriers experienced by the participants. The third focus group involved impartial pharmacist observers who had spent five days in participating pharmacies identifying the barriers that currently existed. Results. The majority of the pharmacist respondents identified that time pressures were the main barrier to the use of the documentation system. However, observations identified that the easiest way to overcome these time pressures was to implement better systems to improve the workflow within the pharmacies, therefore increasing the amount of time available to use the documentation system. Other important identified barriers included the pharmacist's clinical knowledge, the pharmacist's level of interaction with the customers and the pharmacy's business culture. Discussion. The identification of the major barriers will allow the project team to further refine the electronic documentation system to make it easier to use for national implementation.