The impact of a person-centred community pharmacy mental health medication support service on consumer outcomes

Abstract

Background: Mental illness is a worldwide health priority. As medication is commonly used to treat mental illness, community pharmacy staff is well placed to assist consumers. Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of a multifaceted, community pharmacy medication support service for mental health consumers. Method: Pharmacists and pharmacy support staff in three Australian states were trained to deliver a flexible, goal-oriented medication support service for adults with mental illness over 3-6 months. Consumer-related outcome measures included perceptions of illness and healthrelated quality of life, medication beliefs, treatment satisfaction and medication adherence. Results: Fifty-five of 100 trained pharmacies completed the intervention with 295 of the 418 recruited consumers (70.6% completion rate); 51.2% of consumers received two or more followups. Significant improvements were reported by consumers for overall perceptions of illness (p50.001), the mental health domain of quality of life (p50.001), concerns about medication (p ¼ 0.001) and global satisfaction with medication (p50.001). Consumers also reported an increase in medication adherence (p ¼ 0.005). Conclusions: A community pharmacy mental health medication support service that is goaloriented, flexible and individualised, improved consumer outcomes across various measures. While further research into the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of such a service is warranted, this intervention could easily be adapted to other contexts.

A pharmacy carer support service: obtaining new insight into carers in the community

“…For example, some staff who were unsuccessful with carer recruitment were nonetheless willing to discuss their individual experiences in an interview and remained positive about the project and with the support they received. This was not unexpected given success in this area in a previous study, which informed the development of the carer service . As training alone is unlikely to translate into full‐scale implementation, additional mentoring support should be considered in the short term for pharmacy staff providing any new service.…”

“…This was not unexpected given success in this area in a previous study, which informed the development of the carer service. [16] As training alone is unlikely to translate into full-scale implementation, [33] additional mentoring support should be considered in the short term for pharmacy staff providing any new service. Further adjustments based on our findings are needed to optimise the current training and service prior to implementation in a pilot study which, if successful, will inform a clinical trial.…”

“…The carer intervention involved six key steps, which were designed to be completed in a sequential fashion (Table ; Figure ); it could only be delivered by a trained staff member. While the intervention was designed to be flexible, staff were advised that a similar service took an average of 110 min to deliver over a 3‐month period …”

“…This mixed-methods study builds on and extends the UK work [13] by incorporating a patient-centred support service adapted from an Australian pharmacy mental health study. [16] The carer support service aimed for pharmacy staff (pharmacists or assistants trained in over-the-counter medicine use) to identify and build relationships with carers and explore and address their needs (as both a carer and consumer) over a 3-month period or agreed time frame. The UK carer training and promotional resources [14] were adapted, with permission, to suit the Australian context.…”

“…While the intervention was designed to be flexible, staff were advised that a similar service took an average of 110 min to deliver over a 3-month period. [16] After consenting to participate in the project (Step 1), information was obtained on the carer context, for example demographics, who the carer supported (the carereceiver), the associated caring roles and responsibilities, such as emotional and physical support, and who was involved in the carer and care-receiver's personal healthcare team, for example social worker, specialist physician.…”