Frequency of counselling on prescription medicines in community pharmacy

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Abstract
Forty five community pharmacists set standards for counselling patients receiving prescription medicines. Replying to a postal questionnaire describing 10 hypothetical scenarios, they identified four priority counselling situations: drugs with a complex dosage regimen, significant interactions, changed or new therapy and uncommon or difficult to use formulations. They estimated their counselling frequency for such situations as 62 per cent. Fourteen of the pharmacists later allowed a researcher to observe their counselling practice and 267 of their patients participated in a survey of expectations and experiences. The patients completed questionnaires before and after receiving their medicines and were observed collecting them. Eighty one per cent expected verbal information from the pharmacist while 41 per cent reported receiving it and 33 per cent were observed receiving it. They particularly expected to receive advice about how, how often and when to use their medicines and these were the aspects they were counselled most frequently about, though less often than they expected. Many also expected advice on what the medicine was for and any possible side effects, but this was offered less frequently as part of the pharmacist's standard advice. The vast majority (81.5 per cent) felt that the time spent on counselling was adequate, even when this was no time at all, and 62 per cent felt the information given was adequate. After feedback of these results to eight of the 14 pharmacists, seven said they would attempt to improve the frequency and nature of their counselling, to complete the audit cycle. These results show that questionnaires completed by patients in pharmacies provide reliable data comparable to that from observational studies. Well designed questionnaires could, therefore, be used as a self-audit tool by community pharmacists.

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