Identifying Gaps in Community Pharmacists' Competence in Medication Risk Management in Routine Dispensing

Community pharmacists increasingly contribute to medication risk management while dispensing medicines to outpatients. Their risk management actions are shifting from medication counselling towards reviewing medications and following-up their therapeutic effects and outcomes. Acquiring these more clinical tasks require more patient care-oriented competences.

To identify gaps in community pharmacists' competence in medication risk management in routine dispensing.

All community pharmacies in Finland.

A national cross-sectional online survey was conducted through the Association of Finnish Pharmacies (n=574 community pharmacies) and the university pharmacies (n=2) in 2015. One pharmacist from each pharmacy was recommended to report on behalf of their outlet.

Community pharmacists' self-assessed competence to: 1) identify medication-related risks, 2) utilise electronic tools in medication risk management, and 3) identify their perceived needs for developing competence in medication risk management.

Responses were received from 169 community pharmacies (response rate 29%). The highest proportion of good competency estimates were self-assessed in confirming doses (98% of the respondents evaluated their competence to be good) and identifying drug-drug interactions (83%). Competence to identify adverse effects, such as serotonergic load (10%) and anticholinergic load (12%), was most seldomly perceived as good. Of the wide range of electronic databases available, respondents most commonly reported using daily summaries of product characteristics (97% of the respondents), the checklist-type generic medicines information database that supports in medication counselling (85%), and the programme assisting in identifying drug-drug interactions (83%). The most commonly reported training needs were related to the identification of serotonergic load (63%), anticholinergic load (62%), and evaluating the clinical significance of drug-drug interactions (54%).

The results indicate remarkable gaps in community pharmacists' current competence in medication risk management, particularly in their competence in applied and geriatric pharmacotherapy.