Chase Reece, BSHP '24

While in the office today, I continued to analyze the questions that were used in the CDTM studies. Since I had already briefly reviewed the survey questions, today I spent more time focusing on the methods and questions utilized in focus groups and interviews, as these are both methods that will be utilized in our project. An interesting and helpful aspect of one of the studies examined was that CDTM-trained pharmacists met with the facilitators of the focus groups to review the core aspects of CDTM before conducting the interviews. This ensures that the facilitator has adequate background knowledge on the topic and they also obtain the perspective and viewpoint of the pharmacist before interviewing the physicians. Similar to the surveys, the interviews and focus groups included prompts grouped into themes. Some of the themes included questions used to obtain physicians’ perceived medication-related needs of their patients, if those needs are adequately being met, and to identify perceived benefits and concerns of collaborative agreements with community pharmacists. This information will serve as helpful guidance when developing our questions in the future.