Purpose Improve patient access to clinical pharmacy services and decrease pharmacist technical task workload in primary care (PC) clinics. Summary Due to concerns with the amount of technical tasks performed by University of Wisconsin Health PC clinical pharmacists negatively impacting their capacity to care for patients and perform clinical tasks, the pharmacy department piloted a new PC pharmacy technician role that involved completion of technical tasks previously performed by PC pharmacists. PC pharmacist daily technical and clinical activities were identified through shadowing and quantified by a 4-week period of work sampling. A PC pharmacist workgroup determined the technical tasks that would be appropriate for a pharmacy technician to complete and developed the technician workflows. A PC pharmacy technician was implemented during a 3-week pilot, when pharmacist daily technical and clinical activities were quantified through work sampling. Following implementation, a 52.7% (P < 0.001) relative reduction and a 10.2% (P < 0.001) relative increase in pharmacist technical and clinical activities, respectively, were identified. Additionally, a 10% relative increase from the previous 3-month average was observed in the PC pharmacist rolling patient panel size during the pilot period, correlating with an increase of patient access to pharmacist clinical services. Conclusion Up to 17% of PC pharmacist daily activities are technical tasks. Leveraging pharmacy technicians to support pharmacists with completion of these tasks increases patient access to clinical pharmacy services but requires additional staff resources.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.