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Letters to the Editor
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Pharmacy services
Finding the evidence
From Mr T. G. Burnham
Donal Markey’s submission to the All-Party Pharmacy Group’s
inquiry into the future of pharmacy (PJ, 2 December, p655) rightly emphasised
the need for good, UK-based evidence of service improvements resulting
from the involvement of pharmacists, if GPs are to consider them once practice-based
commissioning becomes the rule.
A report1 on practice-based commissioning by the Centre for Public Policy
and Health at Durham University, based on feedback from regional workshops
and attended mainly by GPs, practice managers and primary care trust staff,
hardly mentions pharmacy, but quotes the comment that “there are
plenty of people … who will be more than happy to march down your street
and provide services you are too busy to do”.
My impression is that some UK-based evidence on the benefits of pharmacy-based
services exists, and some of it is of good quality. However, only a minority
is published in conventional, peer-reviewed journals indexed by the larger
medical databases.2
Much more is found only in the so-called “grey literature” — reports,
theses and conference proceedings. A small study3 found that only 10 to
15 per cent of papers presented at UK and European pharmacy conferences
were eventually published in journals — compared with some 50 per
cent for papers at medical conferences — and that the average delay
between conference presentation and journal publication was about a year.
Pharm-line,
the bibliographic database on medicines management, pharmacy practice and
prescribing compiled by UK Medicines
Information (UKMi), indexes several thousand papers a year relating to
the evidence sought by Donal Markey, and has been attempting to improve
access by including relevant “grey literature” and online journals
in addition to traditional journals. A recent comparison4 found that Pharm-line
was more comprehensive than either Medline or Embase in its coverage of
publications cited in UK-related papers on medicines management.
Tom Burnham
Pharm-line Database Manager
Guy’s Hospital,
London SE1
References
1. Marks L, Hunter DJ. Practice
based commissioning — policy into
practice
2. Child D, Cantrill J, Cooke J. The effectiveness of hospital pharmacy
in the UK: methodology for finding the evidence. Pharmacy World and Science
2004;26:44–51.
3. Burnham T. Are papers presented at European pharmacy conferences published
in journals? A preliminary study. Paper presented at the 28th UK Medicines
Information Conference, September 2002.
4. Burnham T. Comparison of Pharm-line, Embase and Medline coverage of
UK oriented medicines management literature. Paper presented at the 32nd
UK Medicines Information Conference, September 2006. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal