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Qualitative exploration of the experiences of community pharmacists delivering the Diabetes MedsCheck service

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posted on 2023-05-21, 06:33 authored by Gargya, D, Corinne MirkazemiCorinne Mirkazemi, Colin CurtainColin Curtain

What is known and objective: The Diabetes MedsCheck (DMC) pharmacist service improves patient medication use and provides education on diabetes self-management. The original 2012 program evaluation identified barriers and facilitators in implementation. There are no recent studies exploring pharmacists' experiences with the DMC service. This pilot study may contribute to achieving an optimal diabetes management service in Australia. To explore the experiences of community pharmacists in providing the DMC service.

Methods: A purposive sampling approach was used to recruit practising Australian community pharmacists from July to December 2019. Inclusion criteria included provision of DMC service for more than 1 year and having delivered the service within 3 months of recruitment. Semi-structured interviews elicited pharmacists' experience with the DMC service.

Results and discussion: Twelve interviews of community pharmacist owners, managers and employees (including three who had additional medication review and diabetes qualifications), resulted in four primary themes: benefit of and need for training in diabetes management, challenges of service delivery and implementation, the challenge of patients' diabetes management and the positive effect of DMC on pharmacists' professional satisfaction from the positive impact on patient interactions and diabetes management. Pharmacists highlighted the need for continuous training on diabetes management and patient communication, and a dedicated time and space for service provision for optimal implementation and delivery of DMC. DMC helped to fulfil pharmacists' desires to provide health care. Pharmacists perceived through patient engagement and patient feedback that DMC benefits patient health care.

What is new and conclusion: Positively, the implementation of the DMC service has promoted engagement with other health professionals while also contributing to pharmacists' professional satisfaction. Patient satisfaction and awareness of the health knowledge that pharmacists provide promotes pharmacist capabilities to the public. To ensure that accessible diabetes care in community pharmacy is optimized for greatest patient care, pharmacists delivering DMC should be supported by provision of contemporary diabetes management training and communication skills. Additional investment in community pharmacy operational set-up, such as dedicated pharmacist time, dedicated consulting space, upskilling of staff and investment in technology is also required to support optimal delivery of DMC.

History

Publication title

Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics

Volume

47

Issue

8

Pagination

1194-1200

ISSN

0269-4727

Department/School

School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Place of publication

9600 Garsington Rd, Oxford, England, Oxon, Ox4 2Dg

Rights statement

© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Evaluation of health and support services not elsewhere classified

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