Pharmacist intervention for people with COPD plus other conditions
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Tailored Intervention at home for patients with moderate-to-severe COPD and Co-morbidities by Pharmacists and Consultant Physicians (TICC PCP): pilot randomised controlled trial
IRAS ID
272543
Contact name
Richard Lowrie
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN20219770
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 2 months, 1 days
Research summary
People with moderate-to-severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) become out of breath when walking at their own pace. Breathing often gets worse e.g. due to a chest infection, and results in hospitalisation. COPD treatment involves a lot of medicines and occurs along with other medical conditions e.g. osteoporosis (thinning of the bones leading to fractures). Choosing the right medicines for a patient with COPD and other conditions, is complex and time consuming. But we think that if an expert in medicines for COPD and other conditions spends more time with patients, to make sure the patient's medicines are all working, this will improve breathing and reduce hospitalisations. Our previous service evaluation of a NHS pharmacist-consultant chest physician intervention, working with the patient’s GP, may have improved symptoms and reduced hospitalisations. But this evaluation was not a randomised controlled trial so we are not sure if adding a pharmacist to the existing team, really made a difference. So we need stronger evidence, and the first stage of building stronger evidence is to run this pilot randomised controlled trial.
We plan to randomly assign patients (through a process like flipping a coin) to get pharmacist home-visits (where the pharmacist assesses and prescribes for the patient) and discussion with the patient's GP, nurse and consultant chest physician, or care as usual (everything as normal, without pharmacist involvement). We will collect information about patient quality of life and health outcomes (e.g. hospitalisations) and will ask patients and professionals their views of the intervention. If the results of our pilot study are promising, and patients tell us the pharmacist visits help them, we plan to run a much bigger study to test whether NHS pharmacist home-visits improve breathlessness and hospitalisations.
REC name
South East Scotland REC 01
REC reference
20/SS/0093
Date of REC Opinion
18 Sep 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion