Interviews were analysed using the framework approach. The study suggests that stroke patients’ and carers’ perceptions of their medicines may influence medicine-taking behaviour. In some cases when beliefs outweighed concerns, practical barriers prevented participants taking their medicines. Negative beliefs about a medicine were strong enough to prevent some participants starting a new medicine. Participants’ actions were influenced by the perceived consequences of not taking the medicine and the impact of the adverse effect on their quality of life. Concerns lessened with time with no adverse effects. The importance
of the role of the carer and of a medicine-taking routine was evident. Participants reported the inadequacy
of information AZD6244 molecular weight provision and the desire to have more AZD6738 purchase written and verbal information. Some reported total lack of contact with their general practitioner or community pharmacist after hospital discharge. Many of the difficulties stroke patients have adhering to secondary prevention strategies are potentially preventable with tailored information provision and appropriate monitoring and follow-up by primary healthcare professionals. We have designed an intervention addressing the identified barriers to medicine taking, the impact of which is currently being measured in a randomised controlled trial of a pharmacist-led home-based clinical medication review in stroke patients. “
“Economic methods are underutilised within pharmacy research resulting in a lack of quality evidence to support funding decisions for pharmacy interventions. The aim of this study is to illustrate the methods of micro-costing within the pharmacy Staurosporine context in order to raise awareness and use of this approach in pharmacy research. Micro-costing methods are particularly useful where a new service or intervention is being evaluated and for which
no previous estimates of the costs of providing the service exist. This paper describes the rationale for undertaking a micro-costing study before detailing and illustrating the process involved. The illustration relates to a recently completed trial of multi-professional medication reviews as an intervention provided in care homes. All costs are presented in UK£2012. In general, costing methods involve three broad steps (identification, measurement and valuation); when using micro-costing, closer attention to detail is required within all three stages of this process. The mean (standard deviation; 95% confidence interval (CI) ) cost per resident of the multi-professional medication review intervention was £104.80 (50.91; 98.72 to 109.45), such that the overall cost of providing the intervention to all intervention home residents was £36,221.29 (95% CI, 32 810.81 to 39 631.77).