Patient And phaRmacit Telephonic Encounters (PARTE) in an Underserved Rural Population with Asthma: Methods and Rationale

Purpose: Methods used to deliver and test a pharmacy-based asthma care telephonic service for an underserved, rural patient population are described. Summary: In a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the Patient And phaRmacist Telephonic Encounters (PARTE) project is assessing the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary impact of providing pharmacy-based asthma care service telephonically. The target audience is a low income patient population across a large geographic area served by a federally qualified community health center. Ninety-eight participants have been randomized to either standard care or the intervention group who received consultation and direct feedback from pharmacists via telephone regarding their asthma self-management and medication use. Pharmacists used a counseling framework that incorporates the Indian Health Services 3 Prime Questions and the RIM Technique (Recognition, Identification, and Management) for managing medication use problems. Pharmacists encouraged patients to be active partners in the decision-making process to identify and address the underlying cause of medication use problems. Uniquely, this trial collected process and summative data using qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pharmacists’ training, the fidelity and quality of pharmacists’ service delivery, and short term patient outcomes are being evaluated. This evaluation will improve our ability to address research challenges and intervention barriers, refine staff training, explore patient perspectives, and evaluate measures’ power to provide preliminary patient outcome findings. Conclusion: A mixed method evaluation of a structured pharmacist intervention has the potential to offer insights regarding staff training, service fidelity and short term outcomes using quantitative and qualitative data in an RCT. Results will provide evidence regarding the feasibility and quality of carrying out the study and service delivery from the multiple perspectives of participants, clinicians, and researchers

Clinical pharmacy should adopt a consistent process of direct patient care

Although the application of a consistent process of care serves as a foundational principle for most health care professions, this is not true for the discipline of clinical pharmacy. Without an explicit, reproducible process of care, it is not possible to demonstrate to patients, caregivers, or health professionals the ways in which the clinical pharmacist can reliably contribute to improved medication-related outcomes. A consistent patient care process should describe the key steps that all clinical pharmacists will follow when they encounter a patient, regardless of the type of practice, the clinical setting, or the medical conditions or medications involved. Four essential elements serve as the cornerstones of the clinical pharmacist\u27s patient care process: assess the patient and his or her medication therapy, develop a plan of care, implement the plan, and evaluate the outcomes of the plan. Despite the fact that several processes of care have been advocated for clinical pharmacists, none has been adopted by the clinical pharmacy discipline. In addition, numerous publications evaluate outcomes related to clinical pharmacy services, but it is difficult to determine what process of patient care was used in most of these studies. In our view, a consistent process of direct patient care that includes the four essential elements should be adopted by the clinical pharmacy discipline. This process should be clear, straightforward and intuitive, readily documentable, and applicable to all practice settings. Once adopted, the process should be implemented across practice settings, taught in professional degree programs, integrated into students’ clinical rotations, refined during residency training, and used as a foundation for future large-scale studies to rigorously study the effects of the clinical pharmacist on patients’ medication-related outcomes

Patient And phaRmacist Telephonic Encounters (PARTE) in an underserved rural population with asthma: methods and rationale

Purpose: Methods used to deliver and test a pharmacy-based asthma care telephonic service for an underserved, rural patient population are described. Summary: In a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the Patient And phaRmacist Telephonic Encounters (PARTE) project is assessing the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary impact of providing pharmacy-based asthma care service telephonically. The target audience is a low income patient population across a large geographic area served by a federally qualified community health center. Ninety-eight participants have been randomized to either standard care or the intervention group who received consultation and direct feedback from pharmacists via telephone regarding their asthma self-management and medication use. Pharmacists used a counseling framework that incorporates the Indian Health Services 3 Prime Questions and the RIM Technique (Recognition, Identification, and Management) for managing medication use problems. Pharmacists encouraged patients to be active partners in the decision-making process to identify and address the underlying cause of medication use problems. Uniquely, this trial collected process and summative data using qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pharmacists’ training, the fidelity and quality of pharmacists’ service delivery, and short term patient outcomes are being evaluated. This evaluation will improve our ability to address research challenges and intervention barriers, refine staff training, explore patient perspectives, and evaluate measures’ power to provide preliminary patient outcome findings. Conclusion: A mixed method evaluation of a structured pharmacist intervention has the potential to offer insights regarding staff training, service fidelity and short term outcomes using quantitative and qualitative data in an RCT. Results will provide evidence regarding the feasibility and quality of carrying out the study and service delivery from the multiple perspectives of participants, clinicians, and researchers