Establishing an evidence base for medicines use review: the development and evaluation of methodologies to assess the impact of medicines use review in practice

The aim of this thesis was to develop and evaluate methodologies to assess the impact of medicines use review (MUR), a new service introduced under the new Community Pharmacy Contract in April 2005. A cohort study utilised a prospective active group of 120 patients recruited from 7 pharmacies across Kent with a retrospective control cohort matched for age, sex, GP practice and number of medicines. The primary outcome measure was a reduction in drug therapy problems (DTPs) with a 64% resolution observed in the active group compared to only 3% in the control group over the six month period of the study. The effect size was significant (p