Background:
As the population is ageing and the number of people suffering from serious chronic diseases is increasing, the provision of palliative care becomes more and more important. But gaps in palliative care service provision and significant variation in the quality of care are still reported.
Aim:
To define the elements in a pharmacy service specification to meet the pharmaceutical care needs of palliative care patients and to identify community pharmacists’ specific support needs.
Methods:
A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured group and face-to-face interviews with a purposive sample of community pharmacists, district nurses, professional carers and general practitioners (n = 54) in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde area. The analysis was based on the Framework approach involving transcription, familiarisation, identifying a thematic framework, indexing, charting, mapping and interpretation. A questionnaire based on a five-point Likert scale was developed. The 18 generated statements were informed by the results of the ten conducted group and face-to-face interviews and a literature review.
Results:
The study provided evidence which characterises problems and gaps in current community pharmacy service provision and in the inclusion of pharmacists in the multidisciplinary team providing palliative care. The main themes that emerged from the interviews comprise supply issues, out of hours issues and anticipation of patients’ needs, training and education, communication and information transfer within the multidisciplinary team. The findings revealed possibilities how services could be improved and also visions of how services of the future could emerge. The developed questionnaire is intended to extend future studies to investigate perceptions and attitudes relative to pharmaceutical care services for cancer and palliative care patients which exceed the supply of medicines.
Conclusion:
This study forms a baseline that illustrates the actual status of palliative care service provision and from which further research projects and the demand for new and practicable services in accordance with the technological progress can be derived.