Reporting pharmacy staff communication for OTC medicines encounters with simulated patients

Poster presented at the 44th ESCP Symposium on Clinical Pharmacy. Lisbon, 28-30 October 201

Assisting consumers in self-medication: reflections on the role of support staff in community pharmacy

Poster presented at the 43rd ESCP Symposium on Clinical Pharmacy – Patient Safety : Bridging the Gaps. Copenhagen, 22nd-24th October 2014

Feeding back pharmacy staff on their OTC dispensing performance: an exploratory study

Poster presented at the 20th International Social Pharmacy Workshop. Boston, 5-8 August 2014

An exploratory study on teams’ performance, client-reported outcomes and satisfaction

Background: Community pharmacy teams (CPTs) have an established role in assisting self-medication, contributing to the safe and effective use of non-prescription medicines. Objective: The study aimed to describe CPTs’ performance in self-medication consultation, client-reported outcomes, and satisfaction. A secondary purpose was to develop an explanatory model for better understanding clients’ satisfaction with this service. Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional exploratory study. Data were collected in a purposive sample of pharmacy clients recruited in six community pharmacies in Portugal. CPTs adopted a structured approach to self-medication consultations, encompassing 11 quality criteria (five for case evaluation and six for counselling). An evaluation score, a counselling score and an overall quality score were estimated. Client-reported outcomes and satisfaction were ascertained via a follow-up telephone interview. Besides descriptive statistics, the association with several independent variables on the clients’ overall satisfaction was explored, using linear regression. Results: Product-based dispensing was more frequent for lower educated clients. Reported compliance with the criteria by CPTs was overall high (93.95% of maximum compliance), mostly missing the ‘other medication’ questioning. Most clients (93%) reported improvement after the consultation. Clients’ satisfaction score was 4.70 out of 5. The variables that seem to better explain clients’ overall satisfaction are pharmacy loyalty, the evaluation score, and the female gender. Conclusions: Clients’ reported outcomes were favourable, as well as satisfaction with the service. Clients’ satisfaction appears to be determined by consultation quality (evaluation score), suggesting the advancement of the pharmacists’ clinical role. A larger study is warranted to confirm these findings.publishersversionpublishe

Tackling the quality of non-prescription medicines dispensing in pharmacies by combining a Balanced Score Card with change management: interim findings

Poster presented at the EHMA Annual Conference “New Models of Care. Reinventing Healthcare: Why, What, How” [European Health Management Association]. 14-16 June 2016, Ordem dos Médicos, Porto, PortugalN/

Evaluation of the In Vitro Wound-Healing Activity and Phytochemical Characterization of Propolis and Honey

Honey and propolis are natural substances produced by Apis mellifera that contain flavonoids, phenolic acids, and several other phytochemicals. The aim of this study was to phytochemically characterize three different types of honey and propolis, both separately and mixed, and to evaluate their wound-healing activity. Total phenolic compounds and flavonoids were determined using the Folin–Ciocalteu’s and aluminum chloride colorimetric methods, respectively. The antioxidant activity was evaluated by both the DPPH free radical scavenging assay and β-carotene bleaching test, and the anti-inflammatory activity was determined by a protein denaturation method. To evaluate the wound-healing activity of the samples, NHDF cells were subjected to a wound scratch assay. The obtained results showed that dark-brown honey presents a higher concentration of phenolic compounds and flavonoids, as well as higher antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Propolis samples had the highest concentrations in bioactive compounds. Examining the microscopic images, it was possible to verify that the samples promote cell migration, demonstrating the wound-healing potential of honey and propolis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Semi-analytical solutions for the poiseuille-couette flow of a generalised Phan-Thien-Tanner fluid

This work presents new analytical and semi-analytical solutions for the pure Couette and Poiseuille-Couette flows, described by the recently proposed (Ferras et al., A Generalised Phan-Thien-Tanner Model, JNNFM 2019) viscoelastic model, known as the generalised Phan-Thien-Tanner constitutive equation. This generalised version considers the Mittag-Leffler function instead of the classical linear or exponential functions of the trace of the stress tensor, and provides one or two new fitting constants in order to achieve additional fitting flexibility. The analytical solutions derived in this work allow a better understanding of the model, and therefore contribute to improve the modelling of complex materials, and will provide an interesting challenge to computational rheologists, to benchmarking and to code verification.This research was funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020-Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao (POCI) and by national funds through FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, I. P. through Projects PTDC/EMS-ENE/3362/2014, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016665, UID-MAT-00013/2013, and UID/MAT/00297/2013 as well as grant number SFRH/BPD/100353/2014. This work was partially supported by the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) through the project UID/MAT/00297/2019 (Centro de Matematica e Aplicacoes)

Hydrodynamic entrance length for laminar flow in microchannels with rectangular cross section

This work presents a detailed numerical investigation on the required development length (L=L/B) in laminar Newtonian fluid flow in microchannels with rectangular cross section and different aspect ratios (AR). The advent of new microfluidic technologies shifted the practical Reynolds numbers (Re) to the range of unitary (and even lower) orders of magnitude, i.e., creeping flow conditions. Therefore, accurate estimations of L at Re≤O(1) are important for microsystem design. At such low Reynolds numbers, in which inertial forces are less dominant than viscous forces, flow characteristics become necessarily different from those at the macroscale where Re is typically much larger. A judicious choice of mesh refinement and adequate numerical methods allowed obtaining accurate results and a general correlation for estimating L, valid in the ranges 0≤Re≤2000 and 0.1≤AR≤1, thus covering applications in both macro and microfluidics.The authors acknowledge the support by CEFT (Centro de Estudos de Fenómenos de Transporte) and Project PTDC/EMS-ENE/3362/2014—POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016665, funded by FEDER funds through COMPETE2020 “Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionaliza” (POCI) and by national funds through FCT “Fundac ao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia”, I.P. L.L. Ferrás would also like to thank FCT for financial support through scholarship SFRH/BPD/100353/2014 and projects UIDB/00013/2020 and UIDP/00013/2020. A. Sucena, A. M. Afonso, M. M. Alves and F. T. Pinho are also grateful to FCT for funding through projects UIDB/00532/2020 and UIDP/00532/2020. A. Sucena thanks FCT for the Ph.D. Grant SFRH/BD/115547/201

Slip flows of Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids in a 4:1 contraction

This work presents a numerical study of the 4:1 planar contraction flow of a viscoelastic fluid described by the simplified Phan-Thien–Tanner model under the influence of slip boundary conditions at the channel walls. The linear Navier slip law was considered with the dimensionless slip coefficient varying in the range ½0; 4500. The simulations were carried out for a small constant Reynolds number of 0.04 and Deborah numbers (De) varying between 0 and 5. Convergence could not be achieved for higher values of the Deborah number, especially for large values of the slip coefficient, due to the large stress gradients near the singularity of the reentrant corner. Increasing the slip coefficient leads to the formation of two vortices, a corner and a lip vortex. The lip vortex grows with increasing slip until it absorbs the corner vortex, creating a single large vortex that continues to increase in size and intensity. In the range De = 3–5 no lip vortex was formed. The flow is characterized in detail for De ¼ 1 as function of the slip coefficient, while for the remaining De only the main features are shown for specific values of the slip coefficient.The authors gratefully acknowledge funding by COMPETE, FEDER and Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) through projects PEst-C/CTM/LA0025/2013 (Strategic Project - LA 25 - 2013-2014, PTDC/EME-MFE/113988/2009 and PTDC/EME-MFE/114322/2009. AMA would also like to thank FCT for the financial support through the scholarship SFRH/BPD/75436/2010

Compensation algorithms based on the p-q and CPC theories for switching compensators in micro-grids

The main objective of this paper is to com-pare the applicability and p erformance of a switching compensator when it is controlled by algorithms derived from the pq–Theory and from the Current’s Physical Components Power Theory (CPC-Theory) considering a micro-grid application. Compensation characteristics derived from each one of these set of power definitions are highlighted, and simulation results of test cases are shown. Special attention is put on the oscillating instan-taneous real power, as it may produce torque oscillations or frequency variations in weak systems (micro-grids) generators. The oscillating instantaneous real power, as defined in the pq-Theory, gives the amount of energy oscillating between the source and the load, and its com-pensation using a switching compensator must have an energy storage element to exchan ge it with the load. The energy storage element can be ea sily calculated with the pq-Theory