Patients’ perception of pharmaceutical services available in a community pharmacy among patients living in a rural area of the United Kingdom

Objective: Patients’ opinion about prevalence of pharmaceutical services available in a community pharmacy among patients living in a rural area of the United Kingdom. The secondary objective was to identify appropriate action(s) to enhance patients’ awareness of pharmaceutical services in rural areas. Methods: A self-administered, anonymous questionnaire was distributed to patients visiting a community pharmacy in Eye, Suffolk, United Kingdom between July and August, 2015. The main inclusion criterion was living in a rural area. Comparisons were performed using chi-square tests and logistic regression. Results: The study included 103 respondents: 70 women (69.0%) and 33 men (32.0%), aged 16–85 years. Most respondents declared the primary tasks of a community pharmacy were dispensing medicines (86.4% of respondents) and repeat dispensing (72.8% of respondents). Additionally, 23.3% of respondents treated minor ailments at the pharmacy, including bacterial/viral infections, minor injuries, stomach problems, and allergies. The Medicines Use Review service was the only advanced service used in this pharmacy (12.6% of respondents), primarily by men. Younger patients were more familiar with the term of pharmaceutical care (p<0.05; OR=0.33). Conclusions: Only a few pharmaceutical services are utilized by people living in rural areas in the UK, namely prescription dispensing, repeat dispensing, and sale of medications that support self-care for minor ailments. We found an overall poor awareness of the expanded variety of pharmaceutical services encouraged by the community pharmacy contract introduced in the UK in 2005. Therefore, politicians, pharmacists, and pharmacy experts should actively promote these advanced pharmaceutical services in rural areas

The evaluation of pharmaceutical pictograms among elderly patients in community pharmacy settings &ndash; a multicenter pilot study

Piotr Merks,1,2,* Damian Świeczkowski,3,* Marcin Balcerzak,4 Ewelina Drelich,4 Katarzyna Białoszewska,5 Natalia Cwalina,3 Jerzy Krysinski,1 Miłosz Jaguszewski,3 Annie Pouliot,6 Regis Vaillancourt6 1Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz, Nicolaus University in Torun, Bydgoszcz-Torun, Poland; 2Piktorex Sp. z.o.o., Warsaw, Poland; 3First Department of Cardiology, Medical University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland; 4Farenta Polska, Warsaw, Poland; 5Department of Medical Psychology, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; 6Children&rsquo;s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa, ON, Canada *These authors contributed equally to this work Introduction: The search for new ways to optimize the use of medications by patients has led the pharmaceutical community to promote the idea of introducing pictograms into routine practice. The main intention of pictograms is to ease patient adherence and to reduce potential risks or errors associated with the use of medications. Purpose: To evaluate a series of pharmaceutical pictograms for patient comprehension. Patients and methods: The study was conducted in community pharmacies within a European Union country that belongs to the professional research network. Structured interviews were used to evaluate the pictograms for patient comprehension. This consisted of an assessment of the following: the transparency and translucency of the pictograms, health literacy, and pictogram recall. Participants were also given the opportunity to provide feedback on how to improve the pictograms. The primary endpoint was pictogram comprehension. Secondary outcomes included recall of the pictograms and pictogram translucency. Results: The study included 68 patients with whom face-to-face interviews were performed. Low transparency results (&le;25%) and extensive patient feedback in initial interviews led to the withdrawal of certain pictograms (n=15) from the evaluation. Among the pictograms included in the final stage of our research, 22 pictograms (62.8%) obtained an acceptable transparency level &ge;66%. All pictograms passed the short-term recall test with positive results. Conclusion: A majority of the designed and modified pictograms reached satisfactory guessability scores. Feedback from patients enabled modification of the pictograms and proved that patients have an important voice in the discussion regarding the design of additional pictograms. Keywords: pharmaceutical pictograms, elderly population, health literacy, community pharmacy, Polan