Reframing the Medication Experience in Pharmacy Using Seminal Concepts of Patient-Centered Care—Implications for Practice

Team-based, Patient-Centered Care is essential to chronic disease prevention and management but there are differing ideas about the concept’s meaning across healthcare populations, settings and professions. This commentary’s objective is to empirically evaluate the theoretical relationships of the [a] Medication Experience, [b] Patient-Centeredness and other relevant component concepts from pharmaceutical care (i.e., [c] Therapeutic Relationship, [d] Patient-specific preferences for achieving goals of therapy and resolving drug therapy problems) so as to provide practice-based insights. This is achieved using a secondary analysis of 213 excerpts generated from in-depth semi-structured interviews with a national sample of pharmacists and patients about Patient-Centeredness in pharmacist practice. The four component concepts (i.e., a–d) related to the objective were examined and interpreted using a novel 3-archetype heuristic (i.e., Partner, Client and Customer) revealing common practice-based themes related to care preferences and expectations in collaborative goal setting, enduring relationships, value co-creation and evolving patient expectations during challenging medical circumstances. Most practice-based insights were generated within the Partner archetype, likely reflecting high congruence with pharmacist and patient responses related to the Medication Experience and Therapeutic Relationship. The practice-based insights may be especially useful for new practitioners and students accelerating their advancement in providing effective and efficient Patient-Centered Care.