Home medicines reviews: a national survey of Australian accredited pharmacists’ health service time investment
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Marea PATOUNAS ; Esther T. LAU ; Vincent CHAN [1] ; Deborah RIGBY ; Gregory J. KYLE [2] ; Jyoti KHATRI ; Arjun POUDEL [2] ; Lisa M. NISSEN [2]
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[1] Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University
Australia
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[2] Queensland University of Technology
Queensland University of Technology
Australia
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- Localización: Pharmacy Practice (Granada), ISSN-e 1886-3655, Vol. 19, Nº. 3, 2021 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Jul-Sep)
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Background : In Australia, polypharmacy and medication - related problems are prevalent in the community. Therefore, medicines safety initiatives such as the Home Medicines Review (HMR) service are critical to health care provision. While the ev idence continues to expand around HMR service, little is known of accredited pharmacists’ experiences of HMR time investment.
Objective : This study aimed to explore accredited pharmacists’ experiences of HMR practice regarding time investment in the study’ s defined HMR Stages: 1 (initial paper - based assessment and review), 2 (in - home patient - accredited pharmacist consultation), and 3 (HMR report collation, generation, completion, and provision to the patient’s General Practitioner, including any liaison tim e).
Methods : An electronic survey was developed and piloted by a panel of reviewers. Convenience sampling was used to distribute the final anonymous survey nationally via professional pharmacy organisations. Data were analyzed for frequency distributions a nd a chi - square test of independence was performed to evaluate any association between demographic variables relating to HMR time investment.
Results : There was a total of 255 survey respondents, representing approximately 10% of national accredited pharma cist membership.
The majority were experienced accredited pharmacists who had completed >100 HMRs (73%), were female (71%), and aged >40 years (60%). Regarding time investment for a typical instance of HMR, most spent: <30 minutes performing Stage 1 (46.7% ), and 30 - 60 minutes performing Stage 2 (70.2%). In Stage 3, 40.0% invested 1 - 2 hours, and 27.1% invested 2 - 3 hours in HMR report collation and completion. Quantitative analysis revealed statistically significant (p=0.03) gender findings where females perf ormed longer patient consultations than males (Stage 2). More HMR career experience resulted in statistically significant (p=0.01) less time perfo rming Stage 1 (initial paper - based assessment and review); with a trend to less time performing Stage 3 (HMR r eport writing).
Conclusions : Accredited pharmacists invest significant time in performing comprehensive HMRs, especially during in - home patient consultations and during HMR report collation and completion. Their significant HMR time investment as medicines experts provides insight for program and workforce considerations and warrants further research to better understand their work processes for optimizing medicines use and improving health.
