Assessment of pharmacists’ delivery of public health services in rural and urban areas in Iowa and North Dakota

Abstract

Background:The profession of pharmacy is expanding its involvement in public health, but few studies have examined pharmacists’ delivery of public health services.Objective:To assess Iowa and North Dakota pharmacists’ practices, frequency of public health service delivery, level of involvement in achieving the essential services of public health, and barriers to expansion of public health services in rural and urban areas.Methods:This study implemented an on-line survey sent to all pharmacists currently practicing pharmacy in Iowa and North Dakota.Results:Overall, 602 valid responses were analyzed, 297 in rural areas and 305 in urban areas. Three practice settings (chain stores [169, 28.2%], independent community pharmacies [162, 27.0%], and hospital pharmacies [156, 26.0%]) comprised 81.2% of the sample. Both chain and independent community pharmacists were more commonly located in rural areas than in urban areas (P<0.05). For some public health services, pharmacists in rural areas reported higher frequency of delivery than did pharmacists in urban areas (P < .05) that included: medication therapy management, immunizations, tobacco counseling, and medication take-back programs. For some essential services, pharmacists (particularly independents) in rural areas reported more frequent delivery than did pharmacists in urban areas (P < .05), these included: evaluate the services the pharmacy provides, partner with the community to identify and help solve health problems, and conduct needs assessments to identify health risks in my community.Conclusion:Rural pharmacists more frequently deliver public health services than urban in both Iowa and North Dakota. These findings should be interpreted to be primarily due to differences in the role of the rural pharmacist and the quest for certain opportunities that rural pharmacists are seeking.

Does rural and urban community pharmacy practice differ? A narrative systematic review

“…Despite the same amount of time spent on dispensing, the levels of professional services provision were higher in rural areas, but not in all cases . Many reasons were given in the papers as to why this could happen, including patient access to a pharmacy, socio‐economic status of customers or how busy the pharmacy was.…”

“…Any disagreements were resolved after discussion. Of the studies, six were from the United States, five from Australia, three from Canada, two from the UK (England and Scotland) and one from South Africa . Across the publications, there were specific and varying definitions of ‘rural’, ranging from the number of people within a geographic area to more complex approaches, which included the number and nature of other health services within a geographic area or relatively close by (Table ).…”

“…They used a variety of designs of current and potential future pharmacy practice, including interview, survey and observation, as well as customer perceptions . Of the 17 studies, two used patients or customers only as the investigated cohort, while 14 used pharmacists and pharmacy assistants, and one used both . Some only used a small number of pharmacies, pharmacists, pharmacy assistants and/or customers as shown in Table .…”

“…In Iowa and North Dakota (USA), Scott et al looked at public health services provided by pharmacies. Of the total cohort of 602 pharmacists, 297 were identified as rural pharmacists.…”

Involvement Of Community Pharmacists In Public Health Priorities: A Multi-Center Descriptive Survey In Ethiopia

“…This is consistent with the findings of our result, where only 8.5% of respondents reported provision of counselling on smoking cessation. However, the involvement of community pharmacy professionals in chronic disease screening and lifestyle counselling were found to be very low compared to studies done in developed countries such as Canada and USA, where community pharmacy professionals provide a variety of diagnostic screening services for blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and capillary glucose as well as pharmaceutical and preventive care services for asthma, diabetes, and hypertension [16][17][18][19]. This is due to the narrow scope of Ethiopian community pharmacy professionals as they are largely limited to the dispensing of medications and seldom provides screening and counseling services on chronic non-communicable diseases.…”