Chase Reece, BSHP '24

This week we are wrapping up our background research and literature review for the CDTM project so that we can proceed with next steps and start to draft potential survey and interview questions. To do so, we are continuing to complete our annotated bibliography by summarizing the relevant findings and information from the identified studies. One study I looked at today stood out because it was very comprehensive and addressed physician, pharmacist, and patient views on the abilities of pharmacist to provide primary care medication therapy management services, whereas the majority of the other studies only examine perceptions from one angle. The study found that consumers typically viewed pharmacists as medication dispensers rather than collaborators with physicians, although they viewed them as medication experts in healthcare. Consumers believed that pharmacists involvement in medication management was potentially beneficial but expressed concerns about costs, pharmacist workload, and rapport. Physicians reported that patients with multiple co-morbidities, older adults, and those with health illiteracy would best be served by pharmacist collaboration in medication management. Physicians also expressed some concerns such as training, integration, patient acceptance, liability, and costs. The study further highlights the need for the pharmacy profession to share the existing evidence on pharmacists as care providers of medication management services and their related impacts on clinical outcomes, patient safety, and costs savings.