Team Communication on Tasks Performed in Blood Pressure Clinics in Community Pharmacies

Abstract

Background: To successfully deliver pharmacy services, pharmacists and technicians need to work as a team and have effective communication. Objectives: To measure the amount of communication between community pharmacists and their technicians during monthly blood pressure (BP) clinics. Methods: Cross-sectional survey method was used to assess the amount of communication pharmacists and technicians had on each task. Study participants were pharmacist-technician pairs (teams) from 10 intervention community pharmacies in the Team Education and Adherence Monitoring (TEAM) trial. Each team provided services designed to improve BP among hypertensive African American patients. Thirteen specific tasks were identified as essential in providing monthly BP clinics, and they were being performed by either the pharmacist or technician. At the end of the trial, each pharmacist and technician were asked to report his/her perception of discussion levels that occurred for each task. The level of team communication was summarized for each task (task-specific) and for each team (team-specific). Results: For task-specific communication, 3 teams had communication regarding pharmacist tasks and 5 teams engaged in communication for technician tasks. More communication was reported for newly developed technician tasks in the BP clinic. For team-specific communication, 2 teams reported no communication on any task, and another 2 teams reported having communication on all the tasks. Overall, pharmacy teams showed different levels of communication in this study. Conclusion: The amounts of communication between pharmacists and technicians were found to vary for different tasks and teams. This suggests that the nature of tasks and the unique dynamics existing in each pharmacy team could influence pharmacist-technician communication.

Evaluating Patient Safety Culture in Iraqi Community Pharmacies

“…(24) . Favorable interaction between pharmacy members, can efficiently improve work processes and deal with unaccepted events that may occur during the daily work (25) . Constantly pharmacy team can communicate with patients and realize the causes that influence patients' ability to control their chronic disorders (26) .…”

Status of Patient Safety Culture in Community Pharmacy Settings: A Systematic Review

“…53 Another study from the United States that conducted semistructured interviews also reported that strong communication between pharmacy staff members was noted as an important element in successfully providing pharmaceutical services. 54 Because the favorable interaction between pharmacy members can efficiently improve work processes and the ability to deal with unexpected events, 55 community pharmacies must set up an effective handover communication system among their pharmacy staff members. Meanwhile, the PRR for "response to mistakes" indicates that we need to focus on high-level understanding to accept staff members' mistakes and appreciate feedback.…”