Abstract
Long term health conditions either wholly or partly diet-related continue to increase. Although pharmacists and allied health professionals (AHPs) have a role in the management of patients with long term conditions, there is limited research exploring whether pharmacists and AHPs other than dietitians have a role in the delivery of dietary advice. This research aimed to explore their views regarding the provision of dietary advice to patients. The research involved a qualitative methodology utilising five uni-professional focus groups with a total of 23 participants. All groups considered the provision of dietary advice in the context of their own professional roles, discussed issues relating to referral to the dietitian for specialist advice and most discussed the need for written information. Interprofessional and collaborative working is needed to maximise the role in the delivery of dietary advice, access to evidence based nutritional information and utlisation of referral pathways across pharmacists and AHPs to ensure the timely provision of nutritional advice to patients. There is a potential role for dietitians to take the lead and further research should focus on this area.
Highlights
Long term health conditions either wholly or partly diet related continue to increase both nationally and internationally [1] and health care systems are finding it challenging to provide high quality services [2].One strategy being taken by the United Kingdom (UK) Department of Health is to encourage health care professionals to “make every contact count” by maximising patient contact in helping patients to retain their health [3]
The findings suggest that pharmacists and allied health professionals (AHPs) perceive that they have a role in the delivery of dietary advice, that they are aware that there are times when specialist dietary advice provided by a dietitian is required, and understand the value of dietary advice provided in the written form
In order to maximise the role of pharmacists and AHPs in the delivery of dietary advice they will need to work interprofessionally when referring patients on for more specialist advice and collaboratively to gain access to appropriate nutrition information materials
Summary
The encouragement of collaborative working to improve patient care is seen as a key part of interprofessional practice [4] and has been promoted as a method of handling the pressures on health care [2]. For example the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggest that for diet related malnutrition, collaborative working can help improve outcomes [2] and reduce costs [5]. Dietary advice and nutritional advice or management are often used interchangeably. In this article the term dietary advice has been used as opposed to nutritional advice. Dietary advice relates to the nutritional care or management of a specific disorder such as type 2 diabetes, undernutrition, obesity
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