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Effectively educating patients about their medications and disease trajectory can improve adherence and outcomes.
Pharmacists play a crucial role in health care systems worldwide, where they work alongside other health care professionals to help ensure optimal patient care, medication safety, and improved health outcomes. In today’s complex health care landscape, the pharmacist’s role has evolved significantly beyond simply dispensing medications to a more patient-centered educator position. As such, communication has become an essential skill for today’s pharmacist.
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Importance of Communication
Communicating with patients during their visits, especially a first-fill visit, is essential to ensure that patients understand their prescription and nonprescription options. Understanding their drug’s purpose, potential adverse effects, expected results, and their illness trajectory is paramount to providing the best possible outcome.1 Communication is also central to determining the patient’s needs, improving medication adherence, and encouraging shared decision-making to deliver safe and effective care, resulting in positive health outcomes.1
Barriers to Communication
Community pharmacies are chaotic environments. Most pharmacists struggle to manage the daily activities of filling prescriptions and taking care of patients, not to mention the corporate emphasis on fulfilling metrics. In addition to constant interruptions and a lack of staff, several other challenges exist.
Language barriers significantly affect the quality of health care a patient receives.2,3 Study results have shown that patients who do not speak the local language are disadvantaged regarding access to health care and experience more adverse effects.4,5 Regardless of language barriers, pharmacists are required to provide high-quality health care. Many large chain pharmacies have employed remote translators, but translator smartphone applications or computer programs can be helpful if these are not available.
Kathleen Kenny, PharmD, RPh, earned her doctoral degree from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. She has more than 30 years’ experience as a community pharmacist and works as a clinical medical writer based in Homosassa, Florida.
Lack of access to the full body of patient information also presents a challenge to optimal communication. Most community pharmacists cannot access patients’ electronic medical records. Therefore, they cannot view patient diagnoses, laboratory values, and complete prescription history. Pharmacists must rely on the patient for much of this information, which is often spotty. Regardless, pharmacists must assess a medication’s appropriateness before dispensing it.6
Finally, pharmacists have limited ability to control their workload. The volume and complexity of a pharmacist’s work varies daily, but the escalating use of prescriptions in recent years has significantly increased the workload. Evidence from a study performed more than a decade ago showed that more than two-thirds of pharmacists considered their workload excessive, and the burden has only increased since then.7 High workload has been associated with poor quality of pharmacy services, including failure to detect errors. Reduced pharmacy workloads result in more time for patient consultation and decreased medication errors.8
Effective Communication
According to results from a national health survey by Professional Research Consultants, nearly one-fourth (23.3%) of the US population struggles to read or understand basic health information.9
Therefore, assessing health literacy, the degree to which a patient can process health information and make informed decisions, should be the first step in communication between the pharmacist and the patient.
Several techniques exist for effective communication between the pharmacist and patient:
In recent years, community pharmacies have emerged as a major group of health care providers. Pharmacists are considered easily accessible and reliable contact points in primary health care; they must communicate professionally and effectively with patients to provide optimal pharmaceutical care. This way they can aid in forming, strengthening, and preserving trust and satisfaction for patients, which will ultimately result in better patient outcomes.
