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A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing
BACKGROUND: Antibiotic misuse in the community contributes to antimicrobial resistance. One way to address this may be by better utilizing community pharmacists’ skills in antibiotic prescribing. The aims of this study were to examine the level of support for “down-scheduling” selected antibiotics a...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5944433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29761047 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4726 |
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author | Sinkala, Fatima Parsons, Richard Sunderland, Bruce Hoti, Kreshnik Czarniak, Petra |
author_facet | Sinkala, Fatima Parsons, Richard Sunderland, Bruce Hoti, Kreshnik Czarniak, Petra |
author_sort | Sinkala, Fatima |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Antibiotic misuse in the community contributes to antimicrobial resistance. One way to address this may be by better utilizing community pharmacists’ skills in antibiotic prescribing. The aims of this study were to examine the level of support for “down-scheduling” selected antibiotics and to evaluate factors determining the appropriateness of community pharmacist prescribing for a limited range of infections, including their decision to refer to a doctor. METHODS: Self-administered questionnaires, including graded case vignette scenarios simulating real practice, were sent to Western Australian community pharmacists. In addition to descriptive statistics and chi-square testing, a General Estimating Equation (GEE) was used to identify factors associated with appropriateness of therapy and the decision to refer, for each of the seven vignettes. RESULTS: Of the 240 pharmacists surveyed, 90 (37.5%) responded, yielding 630 responses to seven different case vignettes. There was more than 60% respondent support for expanded prescribing (rescheduling) of commonly prescribed antibiotics. Overall 426/630 (67.6%) chose to treat the patient while the remaining 204/630 (32.4%) referred the patient to a doctor. Of those electing to treat, 380/426 (89.2%) opted to use oral antibiotics, with 293/380 (77.2%) treating with an appropriate selection and regimen. The GEE model indicated that pharmacists were more likely to prescribe inappropriately for conditions such as otitis media (p = 0.0060) and urinary tract infection in pregnancy (p < 0.0001) compared to more complex conditions. Over 80% of all pharmacists would refer the patient to a doctor following no improvement within 3 days, or within 24 h in the case of community acquired pneumonia. It was more common for younger pharmacists to refer the patient to a doctor (p = 0.0165). DISCUSSION: This study adds further insight into community pharmacy/pharmacist characteristics associated with appropriateness of oral antibiotic selection and the decision to refer to doctors. These findings require consideration in designing pharmacist over-the-counter prescribing models for oral antibiotics. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5944433 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-59444332018-05-14 A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing Sinkala, Fatima Parsons, Richard Sunderland, Bruce Hoti, Kreshnik Czarniak, Petra PeerJ Health Policy BACKGROUND: Antibiotic misuse in the community contributes to antimicrobial resistance. One way to address this may be by better utilizing community pharmacists’ skills in antibiotic prescribing. The aims of this study were to examine the level of support for “down-scheduling” selected antibiotics and to evaluate factors determining the appropriateness of community pharmacist prescribing for a limited range of infections, including their decision to refer to a doctor. METHODS: Self-administered questionnaires, including graded case vignette scenarios simulating real practice, were sent to Western Australian community pharmacists. In addition to descriptive statistics and chi-square testing, a General Estimating Equation (GEE) was used to identify factors associated with appropriateness of therapy and the decision to refer, for each of the seven vignettes. RESULTS: Of the 240 pharmacists surveyed, 90 (37.5%) responded, yielding 630 responses to seven different case vignettes. There was more than 60% respondent support for expanded prescribing (rescheduling) of commonly prescribed antibiotics. Overall 426/630 (67.6%) chose to treat the patient while the remaining 204/630 (32.4%) referred the patient to a doctor. Of those electing to treat, 380/426 (89.2%) opted to use oral antibiotics, with 293/380 (77.2%) treating with an appropriate selection and regimen. The GEE model indicated that pharmacists were more likely to prescribe inappropriately for conditions such as otitis media (p = 0.0060) and urinary tract infection in pregnancy (p < 0.0001) compared to more complex conditions. Over 80% of all pharmacists would refer the patient to a doctor following no improvement within 3 days, or within 24 h in the case of community acquired pneumonia. It was more common for younger pharmacists to refer the patient to a doctor (p = 0.0165). DISCUSSION: This study adds further insight into community pharmacy/pharmacist characteristics associated with appropriateness of oral antibiotic selection and the decision to refer to doctors. These findings require consideration in designing pharmacist over-the-counter prescribing models for oral antibiotics. PeerJ Inc. 2018-05-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5944433/ /pubmed/29761047 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4726 Text en ©2018 Sinkala et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Health Policy Sinkala, Fatima Parsons, Richard Sunderland, Bruce Hoti, Kreshnik Czarniak, Petra A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing |
title | A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing |
title_full | A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing |
title_fullStr | A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing |
title_full_unstemmed | A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing |
title_short | A survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in Western Australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing |
title_sort | survey of the views and capabilities of community pharmacists in western australia regarding the rescheduling of selected oral antibiotics in a framework of pharmacist prescribing |
topic | Health Policy |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5944433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29761047 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4726 |
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