Self-medication consultations in community pharmacy: an exploratory study on teams’ performance, client-reported outcomes and satisfaction

Abstract

Background: Community pharmacy teams (CPTs) have an established role in assisting self-medication, contributing to the safe and effective use of non-prescription medicines.
 Objective: The study aimed to describe CPTs’ performance in self-medication consultation, client-reported outcomes, and satisfaction. A secondary purpose was to develop an explanatory model for better understanding clients’ satisfaction with this service.
 Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional exploratory study. Data were collected in a purposive sample of pharmacy clients recruited in six community pharmacies in Portugal. CPTs adopted a structured approach to self-medication consultations, encompassing 11 quality criteria (five for case evaluation and six for counselling). An evaluation score, a counselling score and an overall quality score were estimated. Client-reported outcomes and satisfaction were ascertained via a follow-up telephone interview. Besides descriptive statistics, the association with several independent variables on the clients’ overall satisfaction was explored, using linear regression. 
 Results: Product-based dispensing was more frequent for lower educated clients. Reported compliance with the criteria by CPTs was overall high (93.95% of maximum compliance), mostly missing the ‘other medication’ questioning. Most clients (93%) reported improvement after the consultation. Clients’ satisfaction score was 4.70 out of 5. The variables that seem to better explain clients’ overall satisfaction are pharmacy loyalty, the evaluation score, and the female gender.
 Conclusions: Clients’ reported outcomes were favourable, as well as satisfaction with the service. Clients’ satisfaction appears to be determined by consultation quality (evaluation score), suggesting the advancement of the pharmacists’ clinical role. A larger study is warranted to confirm these findings.

Over-the-counter counseling in community pharmacies and job satisfaction among pharmacy professionals: A reflection of current scenario and possible solutions

“…This is consistent with some past studies. For instance, Veiga et al (2021) 41 reported that client satisfaction appears to be determined by consultation quality (evaluation score), suggesting the advancement of the pharmacists’ clinical role. Urbonas and Kubilienė (2016) noted that job satisfaction and quality of OTC counseling in Lithuania were dependent on pharmacists’ age.…”

The management of upper gastrointestinal symptoms: A study on community pharmacies in Italy

“…The monitoring of real-world usage of OTC medicinal products by community pharmacists would be useful to set up appropriate guidelines on the management and tri-age of patients suffering from upper GI symptoms, to improve pharmacovigilance, and the establishment of proper counseling on such medicinal products. Considering that patients expect high-quality counseling on self-medication (Seiberth et al 2021;Veiga et al 2021), the use of evidence-based tools for supporting pharmacists is widely recognized as a key point for improving self-medication care (Moritz et al 2019(Moritz et al , 2021a. At the international level, there are many examples of tools accessible to pharmacists (i.e., algorithms or symptom assessment questionnaires) for these disorders (New Zealand Guidelines Group 2003;Aradottir and Kinnear 2008;Holtmann et al 2011;Tack et al 2014;Showande and Adelakun 2019).…”

Role of Portuguese community pharmacy and pharmacists in self-care

“… 28 Subsequent studies have shown a very high satisfaction score of individuals following self-medication private consultations, suggesting the advancement of the pharmacists' clinical role in self-care. 29 Other studies conducted in rural settings, have also shown that >85% of patients' beneficiaries of pharmaceutical counselling had their minor health problems solved after one week. 30 …”