Do community pharmacists influence prescribing?
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate whether community pharmacists have the ability to influence prescribing decisions and to determine the extent to which they do so.


METHODS
International Pharmaceutical Abstracts was searched for articles published between January 1970 and September 2002 and MEDLINE was searched for articles published between January 1966 and September 2002 that contain the terms pharmaceutical care or pharmacist and intervention.


METHODS
Selected studies documented pharmacist interventions that resulted in a change in prescribing that required influencing the prescriber, included a complete description of methods and results, and were conducted in community pharmacies in the United States.


METHODS
Selected studies were examined to determine whether, in what ways, and to what extent community pharmacists influenced prescribing.


RESULTS
Community pharmacists in traditional practices regularly, but infrequently, recommend to prescribers that they initiate, discontinue, or change drug therapy. Prescribers usually accept and implement pharmacists' suggestions. Pharmacists are more likely to intervene to correct drug therapy problems when they have been trained to provide pharmaceutical care and have modified their practices to accommodate a more patient-centered style of practice. In the larger reviewed studies, pharmacists intervened to change therapy for the majority of their patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Community pharmacists routinely intervene to influence prescribing. They do so, for the most part, to correct clinical problems or to provide their patients with more affordable therapy. In the majority of interventions, physicians accept and implement pharmacists' suggestions.
Carroll
Norman V
NV
Division of Pharmacy Administration, School of Pharmacy, Virginia Commonwealth University, Medical College of Virginia Campus, Richmond, VA 23298-0533, USA. nvcarroll@vcu.edu
D003157:Community Pharmacy Services; D003376:Counseling; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*