The aim of this paper was to propose key steps for community pharmacist integration into a patient care pathway for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) management. A literature search was conducted to identify publications focusing on the role of the community pharmacist in identification and management of COPD. The literature search highlighted evidence supporting an important role fo...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate studies of pharmacist-led interventions on potentially inappropriate prescribing among community-dwelling older adults receiving primary care to identify the components of a successful intervention. DATA SOURCES An electronic search of the literature was conducted using the following databases from inception to December 2015: PubMed, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing a...

Palliative care emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to care to improve quality of life and relieve symptoms. Palliative care is provided in many ways; in hospices, hospital units, and the community. However, the greatest proportion of palliative care is in the community. In hospice and palliative care units in hospitals, clinical pharmacists are part of the interdisciplinary team and work ...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death globally. Community pharmacist intervention studies have demonstrated clinical effectiveness for improving several leading individual CVD risk factors. Primary prevention strategies increasingly emphasise the need for consideration of overall cardiovascular risk and concurrent management of multiple risk factors. It is theref...

BACKGROUND Hypertension control rates remain suboptimal. Pharmacists' scope of practice is evolving, and their position in the community may be ideal for improving hypertension care. We aimed to study the impact of pharmacist prescribing on blood pressure (BP) control in community-dwelling patients. METHODS AND RESULTS We designed a patient-level, randomized, controlled trial, enrolling adult...

Reducing avoidable hospital admissions is a priority for the NHS. Medicines account for about 4–6.5 per cent of emergency admissions, 3 and causes related to medicines fall into three broad categories: adverse drug reactions,prescribing errors and poor compliance. In theory it should be possible to reduce the underpinning causes for these three types of problems, but evidence from randomised co...

Background Increased involvement of pharmacists in patient care may increase access to health care and improve patient outcomes. Purpose To determine the effectiveness and harms of pharmacist-led chronic disease management for community-dwelling adults. Data Sources MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts from 1995 through February 2016, and reference l...

OBJECTIVE To determine if a prototype pharmacists' services evaluation programme that uses linked community pharmacy claims and health administrative data to measure pharmacists' performance can be used to identify characteristics of pharmacies providing higher quality of care. DESIGN Population-based cohort study using community pharmacy claims from 1 November 2009 to 30 June 2010. SETTING...