Department of Pharmacy Practice and Pharmacotherapeutics, College of Pharmacy, University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
College of Pharmacy, Al Ain University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Res Social Adm Pharm. 2022 Mar;18(3):2510-2516. doi: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2021.04.017. Epub 2021 Apr 30.
Community pharmacists have the responsibilities of identifying and resolving medication-related problems (MRPs), thereby improving patient safety.
To deliver a series of clinical case scenarios using WhatsApp and assess the impact of this method on the ability of pharmacists to identify MRPs.
This study was conducted in 104 community pharmacies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over a period of six months. Recruited pharmacies were randomly allocated to either intervention or control groups using a 1:1 allocation ratio. Senior experts in clinical pharmacy created a series of clinical case scenarios based on their clinical practice and based on previous published studies related to MRPs. WhatsApp®, a well-known messenger application, which has been proven to be an efficient platform to improve communication between learners and educators, was used to deliver clinical scenarios-based educational interventions to pharmacists. Then, pharmacists from both groups filled a standardized data reporting form. The clinical importance of pharmacist recommendations was assessed by a multidisciplinary expert panel.
The total number of patients with MRPs across the intervention and control groups was 492 versus 194 (p = 0.01). While the number of MRPs identified, the mean time needed to resolve MRPs for patients with major polypharmacy, and physicians' acceptance of pharmacist recommendations across the intervention and control groups were 492 versus 194, 1589 versus 255, 6.82 (±3.86) versus 10.78 (±6.38), and 1065/1284 (82.94%) versus 125/201 (62.18%), respectively, all with p < 0.05. Efficacy-related problems (27.56%) and safety-related problems (28.44%) were the most commonly identified MRPs by pharmacists in the intervention group. Clinically significance of pharmacist recommendations was a significant predictive factor for physicians' acceptance of pharmacist recommendations.
Clinical case scenarios delivered by WhatsApp may be useful for improving the ability of pharmacists to identify MRPs and for shortening the mean time needed to resolve MRPs.
社区药剂师有识别和解决药物相关问题（MRP）的责任，从而提高患者的安全性。
使用 WhatsApp 提供一系列临床病例情景，并评估这种方法对药剂师识别 MRP 能力的影响。
本研究在阿联酋（UAE）的 104 家社区药房进行，为期六个月。招募的药房采用 1:1 分配比例随机分配到干预组或对照组。临床药学的高级专家根据他们的临床实践以及与 MRP 相关的先前发表的研究，创建了一系列临床病例情景。WhatsApp®，一种众所周知的消息传递应用程序，已被证明是改善学习者和教育者之间沟通的有效平台，被用于向药剂师提供基于临床情景的教育干预。然后，两组药剂师填写一份标准化的数据报告表。由多学科专家小组评估药剂师建议的临床重要性。
干预组和对照组患者的 MRP 总数分别为 492 例和 194 例（p=0.01）。在干预组和对照组中，识别出的 MRP 数量、解决有多种药物治疗的患者 MRP 所需的平均时间、医生对药剂师建议的接受率分别为 492 例和 194 例、1589 例和 255 例、6.82（±3.86）和 10.78（±6.38）、1065/1284（82.94%）和 125/201（62.18%），所有差异均有统计学意义（p<0.05）。干预组药剂师最常识别出的 MRP 是疗效相关问题（27.56%）和安全性相关问题（28.44%）。药剂师建议的临床重要性是医生接受药剂师建议的显著预测因素。
通过 WhatsApp 提供的临床病例情景可能有助于提高药剂师识别 MRP 的能力，并缩短解决 MRP 所需的平均时间。
