Exploring the role of community pharmacy in providing support to patients in persistent pain

Objective - The aim was to investigate the perceptions of pharmacists and chronic pain patients of pharmacist counselling for chronic pain. Methods - Focus group sessions or semi-structured interviews were conducted with pharmacists and chronic pain patients. Themes generated from the interviews were used to develop survey questions which were then sent to a larger population of pharmacists and chronic pain patients. The results were triangulated to determine the degree of correlation between the groups. Key findings - Pharmacists tend to focus on providing information on medications while chronic pain patients would like broader information, including information on other treatment modalities and general lifestyle advice. Chronic pain patients reported shorter interactions with pharmacists than that reported by pharmacists. Both pharmacists and patients identified that a lack of sufficient knowledge of chronic pain by pharmacists' leads to a lack of confidence and understanding (empathy) when counselling chronic pain patients. Pharmacists and patients both identified time and lack of private counselling areas as some barriers to pharmacist counselling. Conclusions - There are discrepancies between chronic pain patients’ expectations and pharmacists’ focus when counselling. Pharmacists’ have shown a lack of empathy and confidence when working with chronic pain patients, which can be improved with further education and training. The current community pharmacy model needs to reviewed to provide a more patient-centred approach, including sufficient staffing to allow pharmacists to spend more quality time with chronic pain patients in a private counselling area