Barriers and facilitators to older patients' counselling in community pharmacy, perceived by pharmacy professionals -...

The ageing of world population is simultaneously a great triumph and a great challenge. It is crucial to adapt health care systems to older population and community pharmacies are not an exception.

This study aims to identify barriers and facilitators perceived by pharmacy professionals, that may influence older patients' counselling in community pharmacy.

Four focus groups were conducted with 18 pharmacy professionals with at least three years of professional experience in community pharmacy and who were currently working in community pharmacies in Portugal. The meetings were held via Zoom. The audio was recorded, the interviews were transcribed ad verbatim and the data were managed using NVivo (version 15).

Three main themes emerged: barriers centered in older adults, centered in physical space and centered in pharmacy professionals. Twelve categories emerged from the data analysis. Literacy, aisles and access and time management were most mentioned categories of each theme, respectively. Also, several facilitators were identified, which were organized according to the same three themes, with an additional one, facilitators centered in society. Ten categories were identified. Human skills, sitting attendance, skills and management of prescriptions were the most cited ones of each theme, respectively.

This study demonstrate that it is urgent to involve community pharmacies into age-friendly initiatives, to create safe environments for older population which is one of the most frequent patients in community pharmacies.

The project was approved by the Ethics Committee of School of Health of Polytechnic of Porto (reference number CE0084B).