Patient attitudes regarding pharmacist-administered memory screening in community pharmacies

Abstract

To describe patient attitudes toward pharmacist-administered memory screening in community pharmacies and assess patient satisfaction with screening in this venue. One pharmacist in each of two pharmacies performed a background assessment and administered the Mini-Mental State Examination, the category (animal) fluency test, and the clock-drawing test to participants 60 to 75 years of age with no previous diagnosis of cognitive impairment and who were not taking a prescribed medication for dementia. Participants then completed a 28-item Likert-type scale evaluation. Responses to survey items of "agree" and "strongly agree" were aggregated. 26 participants were recruited with a mean (±SD) age of 66.7 ± 5.5 years. Agree and strongly agree response rates of 75% or greater were considered indicative of strongly positive attitudes or beliefs and likely to influence participants' decisions to be screened in community pharmacies. The majority of participants responded favorably to several aspects of offering memory screening in pharmacies, including the accuracy of testing by a trained pharmacist (84%), willingness to be screened by a trained pharmacist (80%), willingness to undergo annual screening (92%), and convenience of the pharmacy as a location for memory screening (100%). A slightly lower percent of participants (72%) agreed or strongly agreed that they would be willing to have their memory tested in any pharmacy offering the service. Less than one-half of participants (45.5%) indicated that they would be willing to pay out of pocket for the screening. Responses to the evaluation and statistically significant correlations among evaluation items suggested that memory screening by pharmacists in community pharmacies was a feasible, acceptable, and convenient venue for routine screening.