Browsing by Subject "community pharmacy"

Background and objectives: Documenting and processing of dispensing errors at both organizational and national levels is one of the basic preconditions for effective medication risk management. Since the most recently accomplished national register research of dispensing errors in Finland, there have been several changes in the medication dispensing process that advance medication safety. Thus, the previous study does not provide an up-to-date picture of the current situation. The primary objective of this study was to find out the trends in dispensing errors that were reported to the Finnish Pharmacy Association's registry of dispensing errors in 2015–2019. The secondary objective was to identify risk factors expository to dispensing errors in the dispensing process and to review the measures utilized by community pharmacies to prevent dispensing errors. Materials and methods: The retrospective registry study, in which the register of dispensing errors maintained by the Finnish Association of Pharmacists for the period from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2019, was analyzed. Cases that did not fulfil the definition of a dispensing error (n=829) were removed from the original data (n=17763). In addition, clear errors (n=2130) were corrected in the data and cases (n=499) that were initially insufficiently entered in the register were added. 17433 dispensing errors were included in the study. The data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel. The number, qualities, prescription types, observers, therapeutic harms and contributory factors of the dispensing errors were investigated in the data. The most common groups of medicinal substance, high-alert medications and risk factors in the medication dispensing process were identified in the data. In addition, interventions reported by community pharmacies to prevent dispensing errors were collected from the data. Results: The number of cases reported to the dispensing error register has decreased annually (2015 n=3913, 2016 n=3795, 2017 n=3708, 2018 n=3578, 2019 n=2439). The most common types of dispensing errors are incorrect strength (51 % of all the reported dispensing errors) and incorrect quantity or package size (14 %). Slightly more than a half (51 %) of the reported dispensing errors were noticed by medicine users. The percentage of electronic prescriptions in dispensing errors has increased and is clearly the most common prescription type in dispensing errors (2015: 79 %, 2016: 84 %, 2017: 93 %, 2018: 96 %, 2019: 95 %). The majority of dispensing errors occurred with cardiovascular medicines (29 %) and medicines affecting the nervous system (26 %). 7 % of dispensing errors caused therapeutic harm to the medicine user. As a result of dispensing errors, 21 medicine users were hospitalized. 13 % of dispensing errors occurred with high-alert medications (n=2244). The high-alert medications were involved in one-third (n=7) of dispensing errors that led to hospitalization. Factors related to the employee (25 %), similar packaging (19 %), and similar medicine name (15%) were most commonly considered to be the main contributory factors for the occurrence of the dispensing errors. The risk factors identified in the medicine dispensing process were related to the pharmacy system, the characteristics of the prescription, the storage method of the medicine and the characteristics of the medicine packaging. In the automated dose dispensing process, the risk of dispensing error increased if changes had to be made to the dose dispensing order. The risk factors for automated dose dispensing were related to the pharmacy system and the characteristics of the prescription. The community pharmacies had mentioned taking measures to prevent dispensing errors in one-fifth (21 %) of the reported cases. In addition to developing their own operations, community pharmacies saw cooperation with other healthcare professionals as an important factor in preventing medication errors. In addition, community pharmacies reported exposing properties for dispensing errors of pharmaceutical products and systems to pharmaceutical companies and providers of pharmacy systems and automated dose dispensing. Conclusions: Trends, risk factors of the dispensing process and interventions to prevent dispensing errors can be identified in the dispensing errors reported to the Finnish Association of Pharmacists’ dispensing error registry. The dispensing error register provides valuable information on dispensing errors at the national level, but it is no longer able to fulfil completely the current medication safety needs. In the future, the role of the pharmacy as a promoter of medication safety should be perceived as more comprehensive. In the development of medication safety, special attention should be paid to the risk factors of the dispensing process, the high-alert medications and to new risks arising from the increase of electronic prescriptions and automated dose dispensing. In addition, cooperation between pharmacies and other healthcare professionals and the medication safety culture of pharmacies should be further strengthened.

Traditionally pharmacists’ activities have focused on the manufacturing and compounding of medicinal products. The production of medicines has shifted from pharmacies to industrial mass production since the 1960s, and correspondingly, the production of medicinal products by pharmacists in community pharmacies has declined and is now almost completely absent. It has been concluded that pharmacists are over-educated, and their skills are not fully utilized. Authorities and pharmacy organizations have expressed interest in pharmacists’ extended role, which includes patient care and cognitive services. Professional identity refers to the conscious understanding and awareness of oneself as a professional, which is based on an individual's life history: it is the relationship between the individual, work and profession, and its future. Professional identity has been seen to influence the performance of health workers, in terms of both competence and responsiveness. The purpose of this study is to describe pharmacists’ perceptions of their professional identity and its possible change from the beginning of 1990 to 2019. A systematized review was conducted in October 2019. Altogether 12 publications were selected in the systematized review. All the studies were qualitative. In eight studies, interviews were used as the research method. Two selected studies used a focus group discussion as the research method, and two studies used both interviews and focus group discussions. One study used interviews and focus group discussions as well as survey as research methods. From the basis of this study, no conclusion can be drawn that the professional identity of pharmacists has evolved from a product orientation towards a more patient-centered care provider. Because of the complex and dispersed nature of community pharmacy practices, and the many factors that are involved in them in different contexts, it is difficult to interpret and understand what the core function of a pharmacist is in a community pharmacy. Pharmacists could not describe their activities and their roles explicitly. The researchers concluded that pharmacists had not attained as clear and strong professional identity in their current occupation, as it had been in the past when drugs were still manufactured in the community pharmacy. Community pharmacists balanced between two conflicting roles as pharmacists and business managers. Pharmacists, patients, and politicians alike perceived community pharmacy as a business. This view is further supported by the context, the physical premises of the community pharmacy, which are generally more suitable for retail than patient care. This may represent a challenge for the implementation of pharmacists’ extended role.

The role of community pharmacy is to ensure and promote medication safety in treatment of outpatients. In Finland a national four-year medication safety program Apila was launched in 2012. The Apila program aims to improve medication safety with pharmaceutical counselling and followup, support development and implementation of new tools and practices promoting medication safety, increase awareness of medication safety as part of patient safety and increase co-operation between community pharmacies and other social- and healthcare services. The objective of this study was to investigate medication safety situation of Finnish pharmacies in the beginning of Apila program. Research data was collected electronically at the end of 2012 by using a two structured survey instruments. Target of the study was the whole pharmaceutical staff of Finnish community pharmacies. There were two separated study samples. Survey instruments were alike for both samples with the exception of one section. One survey was sent to all independent pharmacy owners (n=593) and managers of university pharmacies (n=18). The other survey was sent to one member of pharmaceutical staff in every community pharmacy (n=618) and university pharmacies (n=17). The response-rate of pharmacy owners (O) was 39 % (n=241) and response-rate of pharmaceutical staff (S) was 29 % (n=182). Representativeness of data was good compared to standard population. According to study the barriers built into the dispensing process worked well. Verifying dose (O: 100 %, S: 98 %), interactions (O: 97 %, S: 94 %) and duplicated medications (O: 79 %, S: 70 %) was a common part of dispensing process. Over half of pharmacies had a written standard operating procedure to medication counselling given when dispensing prescribed (O: 74 %, S: 60 %) and over the counter medicines (O: 60 %, S: 60 %). About 90 % of the pharmacies had a standard operating procedure to reporting and managing dispensing errors (O: 92 %, S: 84 %). According to almost all respondents (O: 96 %, S: 91 %) medication errors were reported in their workplace. Though discussing dispensing errors with whole staff (O: 73 %, S: 53 %) and changing course of action after managing dispensing errors (O: 85 %, S: 63 %) was not as common. The respondents were of the opinion that pharmacy had closer co-operation with home care and social services than with health care services. Some pharmacies had agreed with local healthcare how to manage interactions (O: 39 %, S: 23 %), contraindications (O: 36 %, S: 19 %) and prescribing errors (O: 28 %, S: 15 %) discovered in pharmacy. The study indicates that Finnish community pharmacies have good abilities to identify medication related problems. Co-operation between community pharmacies and other social- and health care services should be promoted, because it seems to be superficial. The biggest challenges in risk management are complete invocation of data collected through error reporting and including medication safety audits into quality management. Pharmacy owners' answers to the questionnaire were more positive than staff members', which indicates that actions to promote medication safety should be made more visible. Coordination of medication safety should be emphasized both national and individual pharmacy level. Low response-rates weaken the reliability of the study, but the results are suggestive.