Supporting Underserved Patients with their Medicines
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Supporting underserved patients with their medicines: a patient / professional co-produced education intervention for community pharmacists and their support-staff to improve the provision and delivery of Medicine Use Reviews (MURs) to underserved communities
IRAS ID
203847
Contact name
Asam Latif
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Nottingham
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 10 months, 30 days
Research summary
'Medicine Use Reviews' (MURs) are an NHS funded community pharmacy service designed to improve patients’ medicine adherence and reduce waste. MURs involve a patient- pharmacist, face-to-face discussion to support patient’s use of medicines and to resolve any identified medicine problems. In England, three million MURs were conducted in 2014-15 costing £89m. Research has found that ‘underserved’ communities are less likely to receive MURs despite them being most in need. This is due to poor awareness and pharmacy work pressures, resulting in a ‘quantity driven’ rather than a needs-based approach.
This study aims to evaluate a co-produced e-learning resource designed to change attitudes and behaviour of pharmacy staff to improve MUR provision to underserved communities. The co-production approach enables patients and professionals to work in partnership to co-design solutions for healthcare problems.
This study involves 2 Stages. Stage 1 covers the development of the e-learning material and Stage 2 its evaluation.
Stage 1: Workshops and interviews will be undertaken to capture experiences and ideas to develop the e-learning resource. Participants will include patients (or organisational representatives) from underserved communities (e.g. people from black or minority ethnic communities, people with disability, mental illness etc) and pharmacy teams.
Stage 2 involves three Work streams:
Work stream 1: Pre-post questionnaires. Community pharmacy teams throughout Nottinghamshire will be recruited and invited to complete an initial baseline questionnaire on-line, to assess attitudes and behaviour scores in delivering MURs to underserved communities. The e-learning resource will then be made available followed by a post-intervention questionnaire sent after 3 months.
Work stream 2: Pharmacy staff will be invited to take part in an interview or focus group discussion about their experience of using the e-learning materials and its impact on practice.
Work stream 3: One-to-one interviews will be undertaken to explore patient experiences of the MUR.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EM/0237
Date of REC Opinion
15 Jul 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion