Identifying the interprofessional agreement between community pharmacists and general practitioners views on collaborative practice in Slovakia.

BACKGROUND

The collaboration of community pharmacists (CPs) and general practitioners (GPs) has a positive effect on healthcare outcomes. There are still many countries, where no efforts have been made to enhance this type of teamwork. There is no evidence of how GPs and CPs collaborate in Slovakia. The objective of this study is to identify the current level of GPs and CPs teamwork in Slovakia and to identify the key factors, where these professions agree.

METHODS

Two parallel electronic surveys were prepared and sent out by e-mail to CPs and GPs in Slovakia. The questions in the multi-choice questionnaires were divided into 6 sections: teamwork experience, attitudes to collaborative practice, preferred method of communication, preferred tasks done by CPs, anticipated areas of future collaboration and perceived barriers to collaborative practice. The results were analyzed separately by the proportion of agreements within each group.

RESULTS

From the total of 670 questionnaires, which were sent out (434 to GPs and 236 to CPs) 347 were completed and returned by GPs (79.95%) and 181 by CPs (76.7%). The overall response rate was 78.33%. The perfect match of agreements between the CPs and the GPs answers was identified in: their preference to collaborate face-to-face (p = 0.0001) perception of the role of the community pharmacist (p < 0.0001) barriers to collaboration (p < 0.0001) areas for future collaboration (p = 0.0468) The majority of respondents confirmed (without proportional agreement) that their collaboration improves patient outcomes (71.3% of CPs, 60.5% of GPs), however, only 15.5% CPs and 17.6% GPs indicated, that they would consider team-working in the future.

CONCLUSION

The responding health professionals agreed about the current role of CPs in Slovakia. Both professions reported their willingness to collaborate in the following areas: 1. patient counselling and 2. patient adherence improvement. Face-to-face communication was preferred by both groups of respondents, as a potential key factor to improve their relationships (general trust). However, in order to create a sustainable collaborative environment, the identified barriers need to be taken into account.Key words: agreement barriers collaboration community pharmacist general practitioner.