The impact of patients' perceptions of the listening skills of the pharmacist on their willingness to re-use Home Medicines Reviews: A structural equation model

Abstract

Research has shown that consumers prefer a pharmacist who is skilled in communication and pays particular attention to friendliness, empathy and attentiveness. Medication management interviews tend to be more time consuming than other patient-pharmacist interactions. The extra time for these interviews provides patients with an opportunity to evaluate the quality of interpersonal care provided by the pharmacist. Patient evaluations of pharmacists may influence their intentions to use medication management services. In previous studies, a conceptual model based on information-seeking theory was developed and used to explain a significant amount of the variation in consumers' and caregivers' willingness to use Australia's Home Medicines Review (HMR) service. The aim of this paper was to extend the conceptual model to include the influence of patients' evaluation of interpersonal care provided. We aimed to test the hypothesis that patients' perceptions of how well the pharmacist listened to them during their most recent HMR interview (Listening) would increase their willingness to re-use HMR (Willingness). Patients (N=595) who had experienced Australia's Home Medicines Review (HMR) within the previous 6 months completed questionnaires. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyzes were used to validate the measurement scales. Structural equation modeling was used to test the model. The structural model provided a reasonable fit to the data and explained 53% of the variation in Willingness. The structural model revealed that Listening increased patients' perceptions that the HMR provided positive outcomes (Outcomes) (β=0.37, P<0.05) and directly and indirectly increased Willingness (β=0.61, P<0.05). These results suggest that patients' willingness to use a medication management service in the future is strongly influenced by their perceptions of how well the pharmacist listened to them during their last medication review interview. Improving pharmacist listening skills may be explored as a strategy for improving patient engagement with pharmacy services.