Community pharmacists participating in the programme will use tools, provided by AstraZeneca for use in the community pharmacy setting, to support patients taking certain AstraZeneca medicines: Symbicort®, CRESTOR®, Nexium® and Arimidex®. The community pharmacist will undertake three brief consultations with consenting patients over a three to four month period. The purpose of these consultations is to uncover barriers to medicine-taking, and to help the community pharmacist address these barriers with the patient. Information about the patient's use of the medicine will be followed up at regular intervals to monitor progress.
Community pharmacists participating in the programme will use tools, provided by AstraZeneca for use in the community pharmacy setting, to support patients taking certain AstraZeneca medicines: Symbicort®, CRESTOR®, Nexium® and Arimidex®. The community pharmacist will undertake three brief consultations with consenting patients over a three to four month period. The purpose of these consultations is to uncover barriers to medicine-taking, and to help the community pharmacist address these barriers with the patient. Information about the patient's use of the medicine will be followed up at regular intervals to monitor progress.
The consultation
At the heart of the programme are three face to face consultations between patient and pharmacist supported by tools provided by AstraZeneca. Each consultation is expected to take about 10 minutes, in practice it will be for the pharmacist and patient to decide how much time is necessary to deal with the issues raised in each consultation.
Outcomes
AstraZeneca believes community pharmacists have an invaluable role in improving adherence through patient education, utilising a unique understanding of the patient's perspective. AstraZeneca has created this new patient support programme to help address adherence issues supporting the community pharmacist to work with patients to achieve practical solutions.
The future
Community pharmacists and patients are currently participating in the Making the Most of your Medicines programme. AstraZeneca will be sharing results from the programme with community pharmacy and will use this information to further enhance the programme as it moves forward.
