Exploratory Study to Inventory Opportunities to Optimize Continuity of Pharmacotherapy at Hospital Discharge

Patient Discharge Clinical Trial

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03223584
• Other study ID #: S58480
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: January 25, 2016
• Last updated: February 12, 2018
• Start date: November 2015
• Est. completion date: April 2016

Study information

• Verified date: February 2018
• Source: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial Summary

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.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 30
• Est. completion date: April 2016
• Est. primary completion date: April 2016
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: N/A and older

Eligibility

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:

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Patient Discharge
• Pharmacist
• Physicians, Primary Care

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Belgium	KU Leuven	Leuven	Vlaams-Brabant

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Belgium, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Semi-structured interviews/focus group: Experienced problems and solutions	Experienced problems during counseling of discharged older patients and potential solutions	Approximately 1 hour
Primary	Semi-structured interviews: Strengths and weaknesses of a proposal for a discharge document for community pharmacist (using open ended questions)	During the interviews, a proposal for a discharge document will be shown to healthcare professionals. They will be asked to give their feedback on the content of the document (not applicable for the focus group)	Approximately 1 hour