Medication Risk Management in Routine Dispensing in Community Pharmacies

Sonja Kallio, Tiina Eskola, Marika Pohjanoksa-Mäntylä and Marja Airaksinen
Additional contact information
Sonja Kallio: Division of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
Tiina Eskola: Division of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
Marika Pohjanoksa-Mäntylä: Division of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
Marja Airaksinen: Division of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 21, 1-12

Abstract: Community pharmacists have a duty to contribute to medication risk management in outpatient care. This study aimed to investigate the actions taken by pharmacists in routine dispensing to manage medication risks. The study was conducted as a national cross-sectional online survey targeted at all community pharmacies in Finland ( n = 576) in October 2015. One pharmacist from each pharmacy was recommended to be the spokesperson for the outlet to describe their practices. Responses were received from 169 pharmacies (response rate of 29%). Pharmacists were oriented to solving poor adherence and technical problems in prescriptions, whereas responsibility for therapeutic risks was transferred to the patient to resolve them with the physician. Pharmacists have access to a wide range of electronic medication risk management tools, but they are rarely utilized in daily dispensing. Attention was paid to drug–drug interactions and the frequency of dispensing with regard to high-risk medicines. Pharmacies rarely had local agreements with other healthcare providers to solve medication-related risks. In routine dispensing, more attention needs to be given to the identification and solving of therapeutic risks in medications, especially those of older adults. Better participation of community pharmacists in medication risk management requires stronger integration and an explicit mandate to solve the therapeutic risks.

Keywords: medication management; medication risk management; community pharmacy; optimizing prescribing; potentially inappropriate prescribing; adherence; polypharmacy; medication safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/8186/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/8186/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:21:p:8186-:d:440601

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().