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 Customers buying over-the-counter medicines have a range of concerns:
they want to feel at ease in the pharmacy, to feel confident in the quality
of counselling, to feel included and to understand the counselling, to
feel their privacy is respected, and to feel genuine concern from the
staff.
These concerns were identified in a New Zealand study exploring qualitative
aspects of shoppers’ pharmacy experiences. Whether and to what
extent they were addressed affected whether the shoppers regarded their
interactions as satisfactory.
Surrogate shoppers made 360 visits to pharmacies, and requested a non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drug or treatment for vaginal thrush. They then reported
back on how they felt about the interaction.
A friendly and relaxed atmosphere made the shoppers feel comfortable
and they expressed discomfort if the atmosphere was “too clinical”.
There was, however, a tension between a casual atmosphere, dress and
manner that put people at ease and a casualness that came across as disinterested
or bored.
Shoppers felt more at ease when pharmacy staff made an attempt to normalise
their problem — for example, when they explained how common thrush
was — and the authors suggest this could be a useful technique
for reassuring patients with problems they may be embarrassed about.
Articles in the September issue of IJPP
• Interactional issues in the provision of counselling to pharmacy
customers (P. Norris and B.Rowsell)
• Evaluation of patient opinions in a pharmacy-level intervention
study (M. C. M. Pronk, A. Th. G. Blom, R. Jonkers and A. Bakker)
• Can a long-term continuing education course in patient counselling
promote a change in the practice of Finnish community pharmacists?
(H. Kansanaho, K. Pietilä and M. Airaksinen)
• Views and practices of community pharmacists regarding services
for people with type 2 diabetes (A. R. Abduelkarem, M. A. Sackville,
R. M. Morgan, M. P. Sackville and A. J. Hildreth)
• Development of standard therapeutic guidelines for selected common
diseases for the primary health care centres of a south Indian
district (N. Mohan and B. G. Nagavi)
• Drug and therapeutics committees — are they fulfilling
their potential to improve the quality use of medicines? (E. L.
Tan, R. O. Day and J. E. Brien)
• Researching “race”, ethnicity and health: a critical
review (P. Bissell, J. Morgall Traulsen and L. Stig Haugbølle) |
Shoppers wanted to be told why questions were being asked, suggesting
that pharmacists do not have a public mandate to ask questions and to
give advice when selling OTC medicines.
The authors argue that “quality interactions” are essential
for provision of adequate counselling in pharmacies because counselling
is not universally accepted as part of pharmacists’ role. Pharmacists
must, they suggest, make extra efforts to negotiate their role as medication
counsellors. Training for counselling
Another community pharmacy study, from Finland, reports an evaluation
of a continuing education course designed to improve patient counselling
skills. It shows that although it is possible to provide pharmacists
with new skills and knowledge, success requires a change in the communication
culture of the pharmacy.
In focus group discussions towards the end of the one-year course, pharmacists
reported that their attitudes to patient counselling had changed in a
positive way and that they were more “patient focused” than
before. They had also made long-term development plans on patient counselling
for their pharmacy. However, while training promoted change at the personal
level, the pharmacists had found it difficult to spread the change throughout
the pharmacy. The authors emphasise that support from managers is needed
and they suggest that it might be useful for more than one pharmacist
from the same pharmacy to participate in training at the same time.
Patient satisfaction study
A large study from The Netherlands included an investigation of patients’ satisfaction
with community pharmacy services. Around two-thirds of customers saw
the pharmacy as a source of information about medication. Lack of privacy
was the most common reason for reported difficulties in asking questions
in the pharmacy. Most patients were satisfied with the answers given
to their questions: the most frequent reason given for being less satisfied
was that they did not receive enough information.
In addition, an intervention programme designed to increase patient education
activities was found to have a positive effect on the perceived “helpfulness” of
pharmacy staff.
Diabetes data
Recent studies have shown that pharmacists have a positive attitude towards
care of people with diabetes, but a new study from the north-east region
of England suggests that practice is not following attitudes.
The questionnaire study asked community pharmacists to describe their
services for people with type 2 diabetes. Many pharmacists did not counsel
patients on use of their prescribed medication — only around 30
per cent said that they “often” or “very often” provided
information or counselled patients — and neither did they appear
to offer much health promotion advice to their patients with diabetes.
Services are falling short of the standards and objectives set out in
the National Service Framework for Diabetes, the authors comment.
IJPP online
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are available free of charge to all users. Further information is available
here. |
