The aim of the project is to look at the quality and safety value which could be added to prescription processing within community pharmacy using targeted population health interventions.
The trial will explore the opportunities from four patient-facing population health programmes, covering:
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Blood pressure monitoring and atrial fibrillation detection
- Asthma and inhaler techniques
- Sick day rules (where patients on particular medicines are advised to stop taking them during a sickness incident which can cause dehydration to avoid harmful side effects).
Eight to ten local community pharmacies will be involved in the trial, which will also see at least two of the pharmacies operating a polypharmacy clinic, in which caseloads of patients are referred for examination of the medicines and potential deprescribing.
Meetings are planned or underway with local stakeholders including the local pharmaceutical committee and Clinical Commissioning Group.
Over £100,000 has been set aside for evaluating the outcomes of the programme, including design of outcome measures. The PDA have partnered with Aston University and are currently recruiting for a Research Fellow (a joint post between the university and the PDA). The Research Fellow will lead on this work.
For further information about the Research Fellowship, click here. The application deadline is Thursday 21 March 2019.