Patient’s Perspectives on Team-Based Care by a Clinical Pharmacist: Case Report

Abstract

1During the course of the study, several patients or their family members offered positive comments about the teambased clinical pharmacist services. These cases came to the authors’ attention during weekly investigator meetings and via pharmacists’ reflective journals, which were kept as a mecha nism to capture pharmacists’ experiences in working with the rounding medical team. 2 Since the overall research plan did not allow for a systematic evaluation of patient satisfaction with the service provided by pharmacists, it was decided to attempt to systematically capture comments from patients in another way, with a view to better understanding and demonstrating the impact of team-based delivery of clinical pharmacist services from the patient’s perspective. METHODS Information provided by the 2 team-based pharmacists involved in the COLLABORATE study was used to retrospec tively (i.e., near the end of the 1-year study period) identify patients who had demonstrated willingness to “act as a reference” for the study pharmacists as a result of the care provided during the study. This patient identification scheme was chosen because it was impossible to contact the entire population of patients who had interacted with the team-based pharmacist, since the requirement for patient consent had been waived in the original COLLABORATE study. Three potential patients were identified and were approached by telephone to participate in a face-to-face semistructured interview. One patient and her husband/ caregiver agreed to participate in the interview, and the pharmacist’s reflective journal was screened for any comments pertaining to this case. The interview was designed to let the patient and caregiver tell their versions of the events that occurred during the hospital stay, particularly their experience working with the pharmacist and the impact of the pharma cist’s care on the patient’s recovery and future ability to manage her medications. The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Review Board of the University of Alberta, and informed consent was obtained from the participants.