1. Evaluation of a pilot support package for hospital
pharmacy staff to develop person-centred consultation skills.
Nina L Barnett, Consultant Pharmacist, London North West Healthcare NHS Trust,
Ilana Leader Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner, Claire Easthall, Lecturer in Pharmacy, University of Leeds.
Health coaching is a method of delivering a person-centred care. This study explores its use as part of a package for pharmacy staff to deliver medicines-related consultations in person-centred way.
Introduction
2. Questionnaire: 24 respondents (46% response rate) reported increased awareness of themes. However, use in practice varied between themes. Overall, respondents valued the support package and rated practice- support more highly than the course for ongoing development, see Figure 2 .
A person-centred approach to care is central to NHS England’s health policy agenda and a standard for pharmacy practice from the General Pharmaceutical Council. Health coaching is a method of delivering person-centred care. A pilot of a health coaching support package, including a 2-day course and practice-based follow-up, was delivered to 70 London North West Healthcare NHS Trust pharmacy staff. .
Figure 2: Results indicating which types of supports respondents would like to continue receiving.
Aim
To identify which elements of the support package were beneficial to pharmacy staff in developing and maintaining health coaching-based person-centred consultations.
Method
Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyse data collected between December 2015 and July This included:
1.Qualitative analysis to derive key learning themes from participant written feedback from the 2-day course
2. Questionnaire to pharmacy staff who had received any part of the support package
3. Qualitative analysis of patient-care examples
3. Participant patient-care examples
40 patient examples were collected from 19 respondents. All 12 key themes were described and the examples illustrated positive outcomes for patients and pharmacy staff
“This simple and fast technique helped me build a rapport with the patient and obtain relevant information in a timely, patient-centred way.” (Patient-care example, pharmacist)
Results
1. Course feedback: Twelve person-centred themes (figure 1) emerged from 49 feedback forms, describing what participants learnt about patient- centred care.
Discussion
While the two-day training course was valued, access to expert advice for individual patients and practice based support was important to staff in embedding a person-centred approach into practice.
Figure 1 :Key themes from course evaluation forms
Conclusion
The support package increased awareness of person-centred themes.
Next steps
A bespoke training course as part of a support package, focussing on use of person-centred themes in pharmacy practice, is currently being developed and tested at LNWH.