Olga Boretska, Mariola Drozd

Quality assessment of providing pharmaceutical advice for patients taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors group medications – pilot research

2024-10-24

Research’s subject. Approximately 5% of the adult population is suffering from depression, and according to World Health Organization’s predictions, by the year 2030 this disease will become the first leading cause of disability worldwide. Treatment of patients with depression is a complicated and responsible process and should be done by a comprehensive, multidisciplinary team of medical workers, in which pharmacists play an important role in providing patients with pharmaceutical care.

The purpose of the research. The purpose of this research was to analyze and assess the quality of provided pharmaceutical advice for patients that are taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) group medications in community pharmacies in Poland.

Material and Methods. The „secret customer” method was used in the research. Interview protocol was created specifically for this research, and it was a checklist of questions the pharmacist should ask and information he or she should provide to the patient as part of the drug issuing process. During the 17.05-24.08.23 period, 26 protocols were collected.

Results. During data collection none of the pharmacists offered pharmaceutical advice, provided suggestions of the “New medicines service”, nor warned against potential drug interactions. What is more, none of the pharmacists asked about concomitant diseases. Despite the lack of realization of established interview stages, in 100% of cases, pharmacists underlined that the patient took the drug for an insufficient amount of time for it to achieve a therapeutic effect. Pharmacists frequently (in 88.5% of cases) paid attention to the adverse reaction of fluoxetine. A little over 34% (34.6%) of them informed the patient about proper dosage, gave other recommendations (e.g. lifestyle changes) and provided information about monitoring of antidepressant pharmacotherapy by a doctor. Only 23.1% of the pharmacists mentioned the importance of following therapeutic recommendations. The duration of the conversation was an additional factor that affected frequency of providing pharmaceutical advices.

Conclusions. The results of the pilot research indicate the need for additional studies on a bigger group of pharmacists with the purpose of identifying important aspects of collaboration with the patient taking the SSRI group medications.

Keywords: depression, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, pharmaceutical advice.

© Farm Pol, 2024, 80(5): 301–306