Clinical checking in practice: qualitative perspectives from community pharmacists

Community pharmacists (CPs) are the last healthcare professional to check the clinical appropriateness of prescribed medicines before being dispensed to patients. This process is known as 'clinical checking' and is intended to ensure the prescribed medications are safe and effective. This study aims to explore how CPs carry out clinical checking in practice, and the main factors affecting their clinical decisions.

The study was qualitative in nature, and data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews. The interview questions aimed to explore how CPs carry out clinical checking in practice. A purposive sampling strategy was employed to recruit a sample representative of CPs in England. Interview transcripts were subjected to thematic template analysis.

Twelve CPs of various professional backgrounds participated in the interviews. The analysis yielded three overarching themes, namely: pharmacists' perception of the clinical checking process; clinical checking as a naturalistic decision-making process and barriers to effective clinical checking. Interviewees described being faced with a trade-off between examining each prescription thoroughly and maintaining the throughput of prescriptions, due to the highly pressurised environment they work within. A number of factors inform this trade-off: (1) assuming the safety of repeat medicines; (2) lacking access to sufficient clinical information and (3) working under challenging circumstances (such as a lack of resources).

Clinical checking is a complex, variable and experience-driven process which is heavily influenced by the surrounding environment and information accessibility. Further research should investigate the cognitive process involved in clinical checking and explore the practicalities and potential benefits of the recommendations identified in this study.