Optimising patient self-medication through the community pharmacist

Abstract

Self-care with ‘Over-the-Counter’ (OTC) medicines is a widespread practice. Patients consider OTC medicines to be safe and frequently ignore patient information leaflets. This may incur risks to patients’ health. Facilitated self-medication addresses this issue, whereby the pharmacist is directly involved in providing advice on self-medication products. The aim of this research was to optimise patient self-medication through the pharmacist’s intervention by investigating the nature and frequency of drug-related problems (DRPs) occurring in self-medication and documenting the interventions carried out by the pharmacist. The first phase of the study consisted of compiling and validating the tool required to run the research. During the second phase, 203 patients presenting at a community pharmacy asking for OTC medications were included in the study. The pharmacist recorded data on patient characteristics and the nature of the OTC request. Any identified DRPs were documented, together with the action taken by the pharmacist to resolve the identified DRPs. The time taken to resolve the problem was recorded. A total of 40 DRPs were detected in 18.7 % of patients presenting with requests for OTC medicines. The most common DRP (32.5%) was ‘requested medicine is not optimal for symptoms presented’, followed by ‘requested medicine is contra indicated’ (27.5%) and ‘duplication of medicines’ (12.5%). The most frequent intervention by the pharmacist was to change to a more suitable drug (57.5%), followed by referral to a physician (22.5%). The results from this study highlight the importance of the pharmacist intervention when dispensing OTC medications, since a DRP was detected in nearly 1 in 5 encounters.