V1Action research of pharmacist's contribution to integrated care

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  An Action Research evaluation of the contribution to patient care made by a pharmacist within an Integrated Care Model

• IRAS ID

  174726

• Contact name

  Phyllis Navti

• Contact email

  phyllis.navti@eastleicestershireandrutlandccg.nhs.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  DeMonfort University

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 9 months, 8 days

• Research summary

  There is emerging evidence that if health and social care providers collaborate, as formal integrated care teams, to coordinate care delivered to patients, this will improve outcomes for patients with long term conditions. Considering that such patients often take several medicines, a pharmacist (an Integrated Care Pharmacist) as a member of the team, could potentially support patients to use and monitor their medicines effectively. This role of Integrated Care Pharmacist (ICP) is quite new and is not clearly defined nationally or locally. Therefore, in this project, an ICP has been introduced as an experimental post within East Leicestershire Clinical Commissioning Group and Social Care as part of the integrated care programme. This study aims to understand and inform the role as well as to evaluate it.

  Research questions
  1. What is the role of the pharmacist in integrated care?
  2. What are stakeholders' perceptions of the patient outcomes that the integrated care pharmacist achieves?
  3. How can such outcomes (in 2) be measured?
  4. How does the current IC pharmacist perform against these outcomes?
  5. How sustainable is the role of the IC pharmacist?
  It is proposed that the study will be conducting using an 'Action-research design to enable stakeholders to be involved in the research both as participants and as co-researchers who help inform the research process.

  There are four stages of the project:-
  1) One-to-one interviews will be conducted to obtain views about ways in which the role of the IC pharmacist can be measured and perceptions of stakeholders regarding the purpose and aims of the new service and how success should be measured.
  2) Numerical data will be collected and analysed in order to inform patient benefit outcomes
  3)Focus groups will provide feedback of the findings a cross section of the stakeholders
  4) Report of analysis that informs the potential role of Integrated Care Pharmacist

• REC name

  London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  15/LO/2132

• Date of REC Opinion

  22 Dec 2015

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion