Title of the research:

Exploratory study to inventory opportunities to optimize continuity of pharmacotherapy at hospital discharge

Study area:

Care region Leuven (individual interviews), care region Bruges (individual interviews) and care region Mortsel (One focus group).

Aims:

From an explorative angle, the study aims to identify hurdles, barriers, facilitators and needs that general practitioners and community pharmacists experience with patients who have recently been discharged from a hospital. From a feasibility standpoint, the study aims to investigate what supportive actions are feasible and useful to optimize the care process upon hospital discharge. For this purpose, a discharge document for the community pharmacist will be shown to the healthcare professionals. The HCP will be given the opportunity to give feedback on this document.

Study design:

A non-interventional, qualitative study is set up using face-to-face, semi-structured interviews and a focus group.

Study population:

Community pharmacists and general practitioners that are employed in the study region and that are considered opinion leaders.

Number of health care professionals:

Individual interviews will be organised until there is saturation of information and no new elements are provided in the interviews. At least five community pharmacists and five general practitioners will be interviewed per care region. In addition, a focus group will take place in care region Mortsel.

Procedures:

Upon an informed consent of the healthcare professional, a semi-structured face-to-face interview will take place. The interview will focus on concrete patient cases, provided by the healthcare professional, as well as a fictional case of the researcher. In the focus group, data of the individual interviews will be presented and the relevance and completeness of the information will be assessed. Finally, the aim of the focus group is to reach a consensus on the research questions.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Profession: general practitioner or community pharmacists
• Employment in care regions Leuven, Bruges or Kontich
• Experience in daily practice
• Interest in research or optimisation of the healthcare profession. For example supervisors of an internship, local coordinators of general practitioners or pharmacy clusters and active HCP that are linked with professional associations.

Exclusion Criteria:

None

Community pharmacists and general practitioners that are employed in the study region and that are considered opinion leaders.