COPD case-finding and management in community pharmacy: informing pharmacists to improve patient care

• Author / Creator

  Idowu, Omowumi O.

• Pharmacists could have an important role to play in reducing the increasing societal burden of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease through the professional services they provide. The overall objective of this thesis is to contribute to a multi-phased research aimed at developing an intervention to enhance the role of pharmacists in COPD diagnosis and management.
  In the first study of this thesis, we conducted a scoping review that provided an overview of case-finding approaches by healthcare professionals, examined the yield of these approaches and identified characteristics of studies with the highest yields of new cases. We identified twenty approaches to COPD case-finding. The yield of these approaches range from 2.3% to 33.5%. In the approach that gave the highest yield, case-finding was done through spirometry with bronchodilation. We also identified characteristics of studies with the highest yields as the following: provider education/training, patient education, active screening of symptomatic/ at-risk patients, multi-step approaches to screening, provider engagement, diagnostic criteria by guidelines, and engagement of other healthcare practitioners. Based on this review, recommendations have also been made to inform case-finding strategies in pharmacy practice.
  The second study was a qualitative research aimed at understanding the experiences of patients with COPD of pharmacists’ provided care. Patients with COPD find value in their pharmacists’ accessibility, knowledge, effective communication, ability to support patients’ disease management by addressing their unique needs. Factors that hinder the patient-pharmacist relationship include perception of pharmacists being too busy and having a poor awareness of the range of services their pharmacists could provide.
  Our findings provide important knowledge to inform the development of a community pharmacist initiated case-finding intervention.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • patient experiences
  • COPD management
  • pharmacy practice
  • scoping review
  • qualitative research
  • COPD case-finding

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-ra5q-j504

• License

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