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Completing the form takes 15 minutes
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The questionnaire
Professor Blenkinsopp says that, although
the questionnaire looks long, pilots showed it takes about 15–20
minutes to complete. The questionnaire is made up of three parts.
The
first looks at
the provision of services and focuses mainly on what the level
of uptake of enhanced and advanced services has been — that
is, roughly how many patients is each service being provided for.
Secondly,
the questionnaire looks at ways of working in pharmacy and what,
if any, sorts of changes there have been since the introduction
of the contract, particularly in relation to staffing needs.
The
third part examines pharmacists’ experiences and attitudes
to the contract. It looks at what the effect of implementing the
contract has been on pharmacists’ workload and asks what
they see as the positive, and the negative, things about the new
contract. |
Who will be asked?
All community pharmacies in the following primary
care organisations are being sent questionnaires.
Primary care trusts
- Ashfield
- Bexley
- Bradford South and West
- Camden
- Central
Cornwall
- Ealing
- East
Kent Coastal
- Hambleton and Richmondshire
- Havering
- Huntingdonshire
- Hyndburn and Ribble Valley
- Kingston
- North Hertfordshire and Stevenage
- North
Manchester
- North
Surrey
- North Tees
- Northamptonshire
Heartlands
- Oxford City
- Portsmouth
City
- Redditch and Bromsgrove
- Rotherham
- South and East
Dorset
- South Birmingham
- South Sefton
- South
Stoke
- South
Tyneside
- Tendring and West Wiltshire
Local health boards
- Conwy
- Powys
- Vale of Glamorgan
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Although most contractors supported the new community pharmacy contract
in England and Wales in the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee’s
2004 vote, there has been no assessment of how they view it in practice.
This week, however, researchers from Keele University’s department
of medicines management, Aberdeen University’s department of general
practice and primary care and Webstar Health will be sending questionnaires
to 1,000 community pharmacists as part of an independent quantitative
evaluation of the contract, giving community pharmacists a chance to
say what they think of the new contract and explain what is working well
and what is not.
“The contract was intended as a positive change and had widespread
support, but we want to know whether it has actually enabled pharmacists
to move
away from dispensing towards working more closely with patients,” Alison
Blenkinsopp, professor of the practice of pharmacy at the department
of medicines management of Keele University and one of the lead researchers
on the project, explains. “This is a real opportunity for pharmacists
working on the front line to make their voices heard — we welcome
all opinions, experiences and suggestions, both critical and complimentary.
But we need proper data to be able to make a robust assessment of the
impact of the contract. This is your chance to have your say. Don’t
waste it and don’t say you weren’t asked!”
The research
“The process all started last summer,” Professor Blenkinsopp
explains. “The
Pharmacy Practice Research Trust, which is an independent charity set
up by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to increase research into pharmacy
practice, put out a national advert asking for proposals for a review
of the new community pharmacy contract. We sent in a proposal, were shortlisted,
and found out last November that we’d been awarded the contract
for the project.”
The project looks at how the contract has been implemented at three levels — by
strategic health authorities (SHAs), by primary care organisations (PCOs)
and by individual community pharmacies. “Earlier this year we conducted
a survey of pharmacy leads in SHAs to find out their perspective on implementation,
and also to look at what they have done to assess how PCOs are progressing
with monitoring implementation,” Professor Blenkinsopp says. Her
team has also recently completed a survey of 31 PCOs — 28 English
primary care trusts and three Welsh local health boards. Professor Blenkinsopp
believes that the high response rates from SHAs and PCOs — 86 per
cent and 94 per cent, respectively — demonstrates their commitment
to the contract.
The postal survey of community pharmacists will be the final important
stage before the project moves into its qualitative phase, during which
Professor Blenkinsopp’s team will carry out in-depth case studies
in five PCO areas with focus groups and interviews with community pharmacists,
GPs, primary care organisation staff and patients. Community pharmacy survey
Having completed the work on assessing implementation at SHA and PCO
levels, the team is now moving on to look at the impact of the contract
in individual pharmacies. “We will be sending the questionnaires
out in September and we are hoping to have them back with us as soon
as possible. We will be sending regular reminders to those pharmacists
who don’t respond and hope to analyse the data from early October,” Professor
Blenkinsopp says. The researchers will then work through the data and
produce a report for early 2007, after which they will also write up
some of the work for publication.
“What we will essentially be looking at with the questionnaire is
what has made implementation go well and what has caused problems — what
particular initiatives have proved successful in getting different services
up and running and where pharmacists have encountered stumbling blocks,” Professor
Blenkinsopp explains.
The questionnaire has, she adds, been through several rewrites since
it was originally drafted. “We have done a lot of piloting of the
questionnaire since we started working on it a few months ago and have
also consulted an external advisory group. The feedback from community
pharmacists, in particular, has meant that things like the format of
the questions has been changed.”
In addition, the pilot survey revealed a striking difference in response
rates from pharmacists in independent and multiple pharmacies — up
to 70 per cent of independent pharmacists responded, compared to just
10 per cent of the multiples. “Even though multiple companies were
supporting the survey, feedback suggested that pharmacists working for
multiples were unsure whether their employers were happy for them to
complete the questionnaire,” Professor Blenkinsopp says. “We
have talked again with all of the multiples and they are helping us by
sending the questionnaire to their pharmacists on our behalf with a covering
letter asking them to complete it. Pharmacists will return the questionnaire
direct to us and it will be completely anonymous.” |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal