Summary

The Medicines Use Review (MUR) is a community pharmacy service funded by the NHS to improve patients’ adherence to medication and/or reduce medicines waste. However, patients’ satisfaction with MURs was until now untested.

What are the pharmacist behaviours that patients value during MURs? What other elements of the MUR do patients like and what impression does the service leave on them? How satisfied are patients with MURs? These questions formed the basis of a 9-month research project conducted by researchers at the University of Reading in collaboration with the East of England Respiratory Clinical Network as well as the Day Lewis Pharmacy group.

Using an existing framework of MUR patient satisfaction, a questionnaire development phase followed by a pilot phase leading to the main data collection phase involving 105 pharmacies nationwide and 490 completed questionnaires, this project explored patient satisfaction with pharmacist-delivered MURs during June – August 2016. It asked: are patients satisfied with their experience of MURs?

The research ascertained a very high degree of patient satisfaction with MURs: 97% agreed or strongly agreed they were satisfied with the MUR service they had received. There was 94%-98% agreement with other satisfaction-related questions. Interestingly, only 65% of people had wanted to have an MUR at the outset yet nine out of ten people would use the service again and recommend it to others.

IMPLICATIONS:

Asserting the value of MURs: Professional, representative and trade associations for pharmacy should use the results of this study to demonstrate the patient-held value of MURs to policy makers and defend the importance of the service within a patient-centred paradigm of care.

Recruitment of patients for MUR consultations: The high level of patient satisfaction with MURs should be highlighted to patients at the point of recruitment to the service where there is reluctance to take part.

Auditing MURs locally and nationally: The MUR patient satisfaction questionnaire developed and validated in this study provides a valid and reliable tool for pharmacies to audit their MUR services.

Assessing other pharmacy services: The MUR patient satisfaction questionnaire can be modified to measure satisfaction with other pharmacy services such as the New Medicines Service.

Conducting real-world research: We welcome discussions about the findings and future work.

Dr Parastou Donyai: p.donyai@reading.ac.uk

Ali Hind

Dr Nilesh Patel

Division of Pharmacy Practice
Reading School of Pharmacy