Evaluation of a model for counseling patients with dyspepsia in Swedish community pharmacies

The quality of self-care counselling by pharmacy practitioners, supported by IT-based clinical guidelines

“…The fact that 84% of all customers claimed that they had completely adhered to the advice received at the pharmacy is encouraging and almost identical to the result from the previously mentioned dyspepsia study, in which 85% claimed total compliance [13]. In the present study, the statistically significant difference in symptom relief between customers who completely followed appropriate self-care advice and those who only partly complied with it illustrates the high quality of the advice.…”

“…In a review of over 40 studies on advice-giving in the UK, only one considered the impact of advice on outcome [20]. In a Swedish study, a counselling model designed to facilitate the detection of problems related to symptoms and drug use appeared to have a favourable impact on outcomes in customers with dyspepsia seeking non-prescription drug treatment [13]. One German and one Danish study have also examined the impact of pharmacist's advice on outcomes in nonprescription dyspepsia customers [22,23].…”

“…These guidelines are available in both a printed [10] and a computerized version [11]. Referrals of self-care customers to general practitioners (GPs) have proven very accurate [12], but we have limited knowledge about the outcomes of selfcare counselling by pharmacy practitioners on customers' ailments [13]. Hence, the current study complements previous referral studies [12,13].…”

“…Referrals of self-care customers to general practitioners (GPs) have proven very accurate [12], but we have limited knowledge about the outcomes of selfcare counselling by pharmacy practitioners on customers' ailments [13]. Hence, the current study complements previous referral studies [12,13]. The primary objective of this study was to assess the quality of self-care counselling from pharmacy practitioners, supported by clinical guidelines.…”

Frequency, nature and determinants of pharmaceutical consultations provided in private by Dutch community pharmacists

“…However, these activities often remained ill-defined [2], and/or were only assessed within the conceptual framework of an experimental programme and/or for a specific type of professional behaviour. Examples are studies on the performance of pharmacist-managed medication reviews and the monitoring of repeat prescriptions [3,4] on counselling concerning medication adherence [5,6] or non-prescription treatments [7,8], on the provision of pharmaceutical services for specific patient groups (e.g., patients with diabetes) [9][10][11], and on the preparation and execution of comprehensive pharmaceutical care plans [12,13].…”