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  • Supporting underserved patients with their medicines: a study protocol for a patient/professional coproduced education intervention for community pharmacy staff to improve the provision and delivery of Medicine Use Reviews (MURs)

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Health services research
Protocol
Supporting underserved patients with their medicines: a study protocol for a patient/professional coproduced education intervention for community pharmacy staff to improve the provision and delivery of Medicine Use Reviews (MURs)
  1. Asam Latif1,
  2. Kristian Pollock1,
  3. Claire Anderson2,
  4. Justin Waring3,
  5. Josie Solomon4,
  6. Li-Chia Chen2,
  7. Emma Anderson5,
  8. Sulma Gulzar6,
  9. Nasa Abbasi7,
  10. Heather Wharrad1
  1. 1Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Health Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  2. 2Division of Social Research in Medicines and Health, School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  3. 3Centre for Health Innovation, Leadership and Learning, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  4. 4School of Health and Life Sciences, Leicester School of Pharmacy, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
  5. 5Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE), University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
  6. 6NHS South East Staffordshire and Seisdon Peninsular CCG, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire Nottingham, Staffordshire, UK
  7. 7The Queen's Pharmacy Centre, Nottingham, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Asam Latif; asam.latif{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Abstract

Introduction Community pharmacy increasingly features in global strategies to modernise the delivery of primary healthcare. Medicine Use Reviews (MURs) form part of the English Government's medicines management strategy to improve adherence and reduce medicine waste. MURs provide space for patient–pharmacist dialogue to discuss the well-known problems patients experience with medicine taking. However, ‘underserved’ communities (eg, black and minority ethnic communities, people with mental illness), who may benefit the most, may not receive this support. This study aims to develop, implement and evaluate an e-learning education intervention which is coproduced between patients from underserved communities and pharmacy teams to improve MUR provision.

Methods and analysis This mixed-methods evaluative study will involve a 2-stage design. Stage 1 involves coproduction of an e-learning resource through mixed patient–professional development (n=2) and review (n=2) workshops, alongside informative semistructured interviews with patients (n=10) and pharmacy staff (n=10). Stage 2 involves the implementation and evaluation of the intervention with community pharmacy staff within all community pharmacies within the Nottinghamshire geographical area (n=237). Online questionnaires will be completed at baseline and postintervention (3 months) to assess changes in engagement with underserved communities and changes in self-reported attitudes and behaviour. To triangulate findings, 10 pharmacies will record at baseline and postintervention, details of actual numbers of MURs performed and the proportion that are from underserved communities. Descriptive and inferential statistics will be used to analyse the data. The evaluation will also include a thematic analysis of one-to-one interviews with pharmacy teams to explore the impact on clinical practice (n=20). Interviews with patients belonging to underserved communities, and who received an MUR, will also be conducted (n=20).

Ethics and dissemination The study has received ethical approval from the NHS Research Ethics Committee (East Midlands–Derby) and governance clearance through the NHS Health Research Authority. Following the evaluation, the educational intervention will be freely accessible online.

  • EDUCATION & TRAINING (see Medical Education & Training)
  • PRIMARY CARE

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-013500

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors AL is the Chief Investigator for the study and made substantial contribution to the overall conception, development and design of the study. KP, CA, JW, JS, L-CC and HW are AL's academic mentors and provided guidance on the methodology and direction of the study; specifically on qualitative aspects of the study (KP, CA and JW), statistical analyses (L-CC) and pedagogical advice developing the e-learning educational intervention (HW and JS). EA, SG and NA have contributed to the logistical aspects including advice on access to underserved communities, study administration and conduct. All authors contributed to developing the study protocol. AL refined the protocol and drafted the paper. All named authors contributed to editing and approved the final manuscript. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank all the organisations that were consulted and contributed to the design of this study.

    • Funding This study is funded by the Department of Health through the Health Education England (HEE) and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Integrated Clinical Academic (ICA) Programme (Grant number ICA-CL-2015-01-008).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval Full ethical approval was received from East Midlands Research Ethics Committee (REC ref: Derby 16/EM/0237) on 15 July 2015, along with full governance clearance through the NHS Health Research Authority (HRA).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.