Patient counselling and addressing drug-related problems are the\npharmacistâ??s key activities to ensure the safe and effective use of medicines. This study aimed\nto describe the dispensing practice of prescribed medicines in daily community pharmacy practice\nand to identify factors influencing counselling provision; Methods: An observational study was\nconducted in community pharmacies in Basel, Switzerland. One master student in pharmacy\nperformed non-participatory observations for one day at each of the participating community\npharmacies. Patient characteristics, counselling content, additional activities, and pharmaceutical\ninterventions were documented on a structured checklist; Results: 556 prescription encounters (PE) in\n18 participating community pharmacies were observed (269 first prescriptions; 287 refill prescriptions).\nPatients were regular customers (n = 523, 94.1%) and 53.8 ± 23.4 years old. Counselling was provided\nto 367 (66.0%) customers on 2.9 ± 3.1 themes per PE. Factors influencing counselling were dispensing\nby the pharmacist, new customer, customer who did not refuse counselling, customer with a first\nprescription, with a prescription resulting in a pharmaceutical intervention, and a prescription filled\nby carers. During 144 PEs, 203 interventions were documented. Pharmacists proposed few additional\nactivities and performed no cognitive pharmaceutical service; Conclusions: Our study quantified\ncounselling and additional services at the dispensing of prescribed medicines and identified\ninfluencing factors on counselling provision at the patient, prescription, and pharmacy level.
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