Impact of pharmacy medicine information service advice on clinician and patient outcomes: an overview

Abstract

Background

Pharmacy‐led medicine information (MI) services are available in many countries to support clinicians and patients make decisions on use of medicines.

Objectives

To establish what impact, if any, pharmacy‐led MI services have on clinician and patient outcomes.

Methods

All published works indexed in Embase or PubMed, meeting this review's inclusion and exclusion criteria, that wholly or partially attempted to measure the effects of MI advice were retrieved and assessed.

Results

Twenty studies were reviewed. Five broad themes were identified describing study findings, three were specific to clinicians: their views on the effect MI answers had; actions they took; and influence on their decision making. A fourth theme centred on patient utilisation of advice, and the fifth on ‘process measures’ attempting to determine MI worth.

Discussion

Studies report on positive patient outcomes as a direct result of MI advice. Clinicians and patients acted upon the advice provided. Clinicians also reported using MI advice as a ‘safety net’, to check, reassure or confirm what to do. MI advice also demonstrated economic worth, although these studies are old.

Conclusion

MI Service advice appears to affect clinician and patient outcomes. However, study design limitations require findings be viewed cautiously.