The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7487 p131
2 February 2008

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Calls for proposals for practice research

Beth Allen and Linda Sheldrake explain the Pharmacy Practice Research Trust’s future research programme for 2008/09 and call for research proposals

The Pharmacy Practice Research Trust’s (PPRT) research agenda brings together all the elements that underpin professional practice in delivering patient care and services. Five key themes link to ensure research informs and influences the right workforce (ie, adequate supply and high quality) delivering the right services (ie, using specialist knowledge of medicines) in the right manner (ie, competently, ethically and professionally) to benefit patients and practice as a whole:

• The health of the public and the place of medicines (programme 1)

• The right medicine for the right patient: preventing medication errors (programme 2)

• Pharmacy: a profession fit for purpose (programme 3)

• Medicines and the health of communities (programme 4)

• Science, technology and medicines (programme 5)

These themes reflect the general direction for a health professional workforce supporting the key policy directions of health promotion, disease prevention and delivering services in more local settings.¹

The PPRT has been overseeing a three- year rolling programme of research, funded by a grant from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and managed under programme 3. Based on the Society’s research priorities, this work has focused on workforce, education and ethics.

Although these priorities have not changed from the PPRT’s original programme of work, there is an increasing need to broaden the scope of research to incorporate further development in other areas and emerging professional priorities. The trust has identified key research priorities over the next three years. These reflect both the main focuses in the Society’s 2007–11 research strategy and consultation with the wider pharmacy community and include:

• The pharmacist as a healthcare professional

• Value-for-money service provision (building the evidence base)

• Interprofessional working

These three areas work across all five programmes, providing the opportunity to investigate professional development from a wider platform. This is important because no dimension of a profession can develop in isolation. They also reflect the need to put pharmacy within the wider health agenda context and to understand competing interests and political process, both government driven and professional.²

Call for proposals

The trust is inviting applications for research projects in two areas: professionalism in pharmacy practice and multidisciplinary service development supporting initiatives in public health or in the care of patients with long-term conditions.

Professionalism The principles of professionalism, in theory, should influence all current and future professionals and continue to be an influence throughout professional career pathways. As such, an understanding of these principles and how to engender and assess them are aspects for consideration and support in the development of a professional body for pharmacy.

In the context of pharmacy practice, the face of the profession is evolving as a result of significant changes seen in policy over the past five years. These changes, which have brought about an increase in patient contact, mean the profession must deliver services competently, ethically and professionally.

It must also reflect the general direction for a health professional workforce, which supports the main policy direction of health promotion, disease prevention and delivering face-to-face services in more local settings.¹

This ultimately means that, for pharmacy, increased patient contact, working as part of a multidisciplinary team, developing clinical responsibility and increased accountability in practice are now key areas impacting on the profession.

A report by a working party of the Royal College of Physicians defining the nature and role of professionalism in modern society³ suggests that former notions of professionalism, such as mastery of a discipline, autonomy, privilege and self regulation, should be discarded.

Furthermore, others should be reinterpreted in light of changing patient expectations, calls for collaborative working practices and re-entry of the state into healthcare regulation.

The report recommends that professionalism should now be understood to imply additional qualities not expressed in traditional definitions (ie, they should now include the concepts of partnerships with the patient to secure well-being, and dignity and partnerships with other healthcare colleagues based on mutual respect).

Furthermore the delivery of services by pharmacy technicians and other support staff under the supervision of pharmacists will be dictated by the professional influence of the whole team.

The PPRT has made funding available for two projects of up to £30,000 each to support research evaluating either teaching and assessment of professionalism among pharmacy undergraduates or professionalism in pharmacy practice among pharmacists who have been registered for one or two years.

The trust reserves the right to allocate funding to a single research team for proposals that cross both areas or divided funding to individual teams to look at one domain independently.

Public health or long-term conditions
The contract for community pharmacy provides a framework for the delivery of commissioned services. However, although the contract has gone some way to providing the platform for delivery of new services,⁴ it is acknowledged that difficulties often arise in implementing new and untried services, especially when there is little evidence on which to see achievable benefits.⁵

A total sum of £80,000 is available for small to medium projects for multidisciplinary service development or evaluation for patients with long-term conditions or in the area of public health. The PPRT is particularly interested in receiving collaborative project applications that include pharmacists working in either primary or secondary care or in the community.

Priority will be given to those proposals that demonstrate innovation and provide evidence of value for money as well as patient benefit. The trust reserves the right to allocate funding to a single project team or to individual teams dependent on the quality and quantity of proposals received.

The closing date for applications is 28 March 2008. For further information and to request full commissioning documentation and applications please contact Linda Sheldrake or Beth Allen (tel 020 7572 2648, e-mail practiceresearch@rpsgb.org)

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References

1. Department of Health. Implementing care closer to home – providing convenient care for patients. A national framework for pharmacists with special interests. (accessed on 30 January 2008).

2. Allen P, Peckham S, Anderson S, Goodwin N. Commissioning research that is used: the experience of the NHS service delivery and organisation research and development programme. Evidence & Policy 2007;3:119–34.

3. Royal College of Physicians. Doctors in society: medical professionalism in a changing world. Report of a Working Party. London: RCP; 2005.

4. Blenkinsopp A. Bond C, Celino G, Inch J, Gray N. National evaluation of the new community pharmacy contract. Commissioned research funded by the Pharmacy Practice Research Trust 2007.

5. Johnson P, Wilstow G, Schulz R, Hardy B. Interagency and interprofessional collaboration in community care: the interdependence of structures and values. Journal of Interprofessional Care 2003;17:69–83.