Pharmacy Technicians' Attention to Problems With Opening Medicine Packaging.

Background: Pharmacy technicians seem to be well equipped to engage in conversations with patients about their experiences and problems with medication, but it is unclear whether or not they systematically explain or demonstrate to patients how to use medication packaging. Objective: To explore to what extent pharmacy technicians identify problems with opening medicine packaging and how they assist patients in solving these problems. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study that comprised semistructured interviews, with 31 pharmacy technicians in 31 pharmacies, to assess the occurrence and type of difficulties with packagings and to suggest solutions. Results: All pharmacy technicians recognize the occurrence of packaging problems, though patients rarely report them at the pharmacy counter. Not all pharmacy technicians are familiar with opening all packaging forms, but they all describe ways to find out how to open them, which usually only happens after patients bring up problems. Solutions suggested by the pharmacy technicians include informing and counseling, changing or manipulating the packaging, and providing assisting tools. Conclusions: This study shows that although pharmacy technicians are aware that medication packaging can cause problems and are able to name or find out solutions to all these problems, there is no systematic attention for packaging at drug dispensation in most pharmacies. Discussing the handling of medication packaging should become a fixed part of drug dispensation counseling. Pharmacists should draw up working procedures to support pharmacy technicians in their counseling activities.

Frequency, nature and determinants of pharmaceutical consultations provided in private by Dutch community pharmacists.

OBJECTIVE: According to a report published by the federation of Dutch patients' associations, patients would like to see a pharmacist, who acts more as a personal adviser. This raised the question, how often Dutch community pharmacists have personal consultations with their patients in daily practice, on which factors this depends, and what kind of topics are discussed during these meetings. SETTING: Community pharmacies in the Netherlands. METHOD: A questionnaire was distributed among 800 randomly selected pharmacies. Questions were restricted to consultations characterized by one-to-one contact, drug therapy related content, and adequate privacy. These consultations were labelled as pharmaceutical consultations in private to distinguish them from other contacts between pharmacists and patients. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Number, content, and character of consultations. RESULTS: 198 (24.8%) community pharmacies responded. The pharmacists provide an average of roughly 1.2 consultations in private per working day. The vast majority of respondents provided face-to-face and telephone consultations (94.4 and 91.9%, respectively), only a minority gave consultations by e-mail (30.8%). These consultations primarily dealt with topics related to medication safety. The mean overall time spent was 290 min per month. A relatively high frequency of personal consultations was significantly associated with the absolute number of full-time equivalent pharmacists in the pharmacy. CONCLUSION: The frequency of pharmaceutical consultations in private is low, but may be improved by reorganisation of the pharmacist's activities. The possibility of personal consultations by e-mail is not yet well-developed. Further research is needed to assess the patient's view of pharmaceutical consultations in private.