Pharmacy practice research as a national university-based discipline is unique in the sense that it is only carried out in Copenhagen University, The Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, Section for Social Pharmacy. The team includes at the moment 10 members with different backgrounds  (pharmacy, social science, public health etc).

The aim of research carried out in the pharmacy practice team is threefold:

• To map, evaluate and develop pharmacy practice in the primary and secondary health care sector – with a special focus on organizational aspects, tasks, resources, activities and outcomes
• To contribute to the quality development and assurance of activities carried out by pharmacists.
• To monitor, study and analyze the relationship and development of between pharmacy and the laws and policy affecting the field including the health care sector and the pharmacy profession.

The team members are experienced in using qualitative as well as quantitative methods (focus group interviews, qualitative interviews, surveys and register analysis), just as the members cover a wide range of knowledge on social science and humanistic theories (professions theory, learning theory, organizational theory, leadership theory, pharmaceutical care theory, clinical pharmacy, behavioural theory, outcomes theory etc.).

The team is characterized by a close connection with the 107 Danish internship pharmacies, in which students have carried out, carry out and are supposed also in the future to carry out research projects.

The current projects in the group are the following:

• Leadership and organisation in pharmacy practice
• Evaluation of third-party paid cognitive services
• The Medisam study (medication reconciliation, medication reviews and interdisciplinary cooperation
• Improved compliance among type II-diabetic patients and hypertensive patients
• Portfolio assessment of practice learning in the pharmacy curriculum
• Improved medication use among ethnic minority patients
• Optimizing pharmacy practice in relation to selected ethnic minority patients
• Adherence mapping study
• Improved medication use in nursery homes
• The pharmacy profession – a sociological perspective
• The new medicine consumer
• Pharmaceutical policy
• Patient groups
• Medication reconciliation – recently hospital admitted patients
• Quality indicators of preventable adverse drug events in patients with type 2 diabetes – application of a new register-based model
• Patient safety – patients in transition phases     

A pharmacy in its interaction with the patients is a dynamic system, and the efficiency and quality of the system is closely linked to organisation and leadership. The aim of the project is to investigate leadership and organisation in pharmacy practice and to suggest ideas for improvement. The research will include a PhD project. The project has the following partners: Pharmakon A/S, Copenhagen Business School and Dept. of Social Pharmacy and is financed by The Association of Danish Pharmacists, The Danish Association of Bachelors of Pharmacy and the Department of Social Pharmacy (Lotte Stig Haugbølle, Janine Morgall Traulsen and Bjørn Ove Klinke in co-operation with Hanne Herborg, Pharmakon A/S). 

A PhD project on evaluation of third party paid cognitive services was accepted in 2009. The project aimed at identifying organisational factors in local community pharmacies that influenced sustainable provision of the first Danish publicly reimbursed cognitive service, the Inhaler Technique Assessment Service (ITAS). The results of the project have now been integrated as part of intervention scheme in 26 pharmacies with the purpose of improving their implementation status of the ITAS. The intervention project will be evaluated both through quantitative and qualitative methods in 2010.    

Objective
The objective of the project is to develop, implement and evaluate a model of cooperation for medicines review and reconciliation involving patients, pharmacists and general practitioners in a multi-professional dialogue aimed at solving the drug-related problems by involving the patients in decision-making around their medication. The aim is to establishing medicines review and reconciliation as an everyday activity in the internship pharmacies during the 3-year project period, and further on as an activity in all pharmacies.

Methods
The project is carried out in cooperation between internship pharmacies, their pharmacy students and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The working method of the project is based on the action research principles, where research is focused on solving problems together with those who experience the problems, i.e. the patients, pharmacists and general practitioners.  The project is carried out in a three-year period starting in 2008, where the detailed project plans were elaborated, tested and evaluated. Plans for the following two years will be elaborated from the experiences of the previous year.
All internship pharmacies (app 90) and their pharmacy students (app 170) are each year invited to join the project. The pharmacist and general practitioner will agree on those patients who should be offered a medicines review and reconciliation. The methods used for data collection are registration forms for drug-related problems, medication reconciliation forms, patient interviews, case summaries and minutes of various meetings etc.

Time frame
The empirical part of the project will be carried out in the period from 2008 to 2010.

Funding
The project is financially supported by funds from the Danish Ministry of Health and Prevention in 2008-2011 (DKK 1.2 mil).
In 2009, Actavis donated another DKK 89,000 to carry out a pilot study to elaborate cooperation models.

For more information about Medisam, please go to http://www.farma.ku.dk/?id=7913#32880  or click here.

The six-month internship module in the pharmacy curriculum presents a striking change in learning context for students, compared to university, in terms of perceptions of the professional role, sources available for learning, problem solving and organisation of knowledge. Starting in 2007, pharmacy students were asked to reflect during their internship by means of a so-called process portfolio and were also asked to evaluate this new way of learning and examining. The results from these evaluations have been described in a Danish scientific paper and presented at several international meetings and conferences. A scientific paper will be submitted before the end of 2009 describing the results of the evaluation (Lotte Stig Haugbølle, Ellen Westh Sørensen, Birthe Søndergaard, Frederik Voetmann Christiansen).

People with ethnic minority background make up almost 9% of the Danish population. The health care system, including pharmacies, face challenges when it comes to advising and handling these groups of patients. This study, financed by the Ministry of Social Welfare, mapped drug-related problems (including compliance problems), suggested GPs solutions to the problems, and described ethnic minority patient´s drug related experiences, perceptions and actions. Twelve ethnic minority pharmacists did medication reviews and interviewed 26 ethnic minority patients speaking the pharmacist´s mother tongue. The 26 patients came from Iran, Iraque, Bosnia, Libanon and Marocco. A report has been produced and sent to the Ministry. During the next year, several papers will be produced and submitted based on the results (Lotte Stig Haugbølle, Birthe Søndergaard, Janine Morgall Traulsen, Ellen Westh Sørensen, Anna Mygind, Mira El-Souri (Pharmakon), Katrine Rutkjær).

The objective of this PhD project is to gain insight into the characteristics of the interaction between ethnic minority customers and pharmacists/pharmacy aides at Danish community pharmacies. On the basis of a pilot survey and a literature review, a qualitative study is conducted among pharmacy staff and ethnic minority customers using primarily interviews. Furthermore, the project includes an analysis of vitamin D supplementation guidelines exploring how ethnic minorities are constructed as a risk group in policy papers (Anna Mygind, Lotte Stig Haugbølle, Janine Morgall Traulsen in cooperation with Paul Bissell (University of Sheffield) and Inge Wittrup (Central Region Denmark)).

The journal Pharmacy Practice is, these years, running a special issues series which aims at mapping medication adherence teaching, -research and –political initiatives in different countries. All countries in the so-called GRIPP network (Global Research in Pharmacy Practice) are encouraged to contribute to the series. A paper from Denmark will be submitted to the journal by the end of September 2009 (Lotte Stig Haugbølle, Hanne Herborg (Pharmakon)).

An academic interest in the user perspective combined with pharmacy practice research has lead to a theoretical interest in the pharmacy profession. This project is designed to address three major research questions: What is the future of pharmacy practice? What is the status of the pharmacy profession in Denmark? How and why is pharmacy practice in Denmark different from pharmacy practice in other European and western countries? Data collection, including interviews, began in 2003 and is scheduled to continue throughout 2004 (Janine Morgall Traulsen in collaboration with Marcus Droege, Nova Southeastern University, Department of Pharmacy administration, College of Pharmacy, Florida, USA).

Objective. The aim of this study was to clarify the number and type of discrepancies between four sources as well as their potential clinical significance to the patient. The four sources were: patient, the personal electronic medication profile (PEM), the general practitioner and the in-home caregiver. The study was conducted as a cross-sectional study comprising all patients hospitalised with hip fractures in an Orthopaedic Surgery Ward. A total of 69 medications were registered for nine patients (an average of 7.7 medications per patient). Ten (10.1) discrepancies per patient and 1.3 discrepancies per drug were registered. Two discrepancies were assessed as having potentially lethal clinical significance. Forty-one discrepancies (41) were assessed as clinically significant, while 36 discrepancies were assessed as possessing minor clinical significance. Thus, there is a discrepancy between information from the four sources. The study results are now described in a scientific paper, which is currently pending review (Lotte Stig Haugbølle, Louise Lindved-Karkov (Statens Serum Institut), Simon Schütte-Hansen (Hvidovre Hospital)).