I participated in a project which required me to share my views and opinions on the issue of information retrieval barriers for Pharmacists. Here I discuss my original ideas on solutions to these problems and wanted to share it on this platform to allow it to reach (and possibly benefit) a wider audience.
Pharmacists are key healthcare professionals are experts in drug information. However, there are highly specific clinical scenarios where expert information is sought. This is where some professionals can encounter challenges. This short essay aims to address these limitations and explore ways in which they can be overcome.
Firstly, navigating a myriad of different information sources such as books, databases, and websites for quality drug information is time-consuming and tedious amidst fulfilling the demanding day-to-day professional role. This issue can be mitigated by leveraging technology to compile all the information from trusted resources to form a ‘mini search engine’ for pharmacy professionals. This can be taken a step further to be time-efficient by introducing a ‘refine search’ feature which allows pharmacists to input particulars such as patient age, co-morbidities, current therapy with provides an instantaneous strength of a dose needed, for example. This avoids the necessity to scrutinise every detail of a lengthy resource for a specific piece of information and can prove to be particularly useful for independent prescribers.
Contrarily, simply the lack of information accessibility is a barrier to accessing quality information. The current Covid-19 pandemic has cultivated anxious and curious patients, thereby allowing pharmacists to demonstrate their expertise, but unfortunately in a time where the profession lacks trial data to be able to assist the public in their queries. Black triangle drugs such as the AstraZeneca Coronavirus vaccine does not hold a UK marketing license, and only has been authorised for temporary supply by MHRA as the accelerated development of the vaccine means a lack of exhaustive information. In such times, best practice would be to monitor and record the subject’s symptoms after the vaccination with their consent. This data can then be fed into an AI system which would identify patterns in data to foresee potential side effects. This can serve as a temporary tool for safeguarding and accessing information about the vaccine i.e. specific side effects in the geriatric population as it undergoes phase 4 clinical trials.
Finally, accessing quality drug information is easier for Pharmacists working in specific sectors. Hospital pharmacists have the advantage of more exclusive drug information than community pharmacists due to a body of hospital pharmacist specialists, as they have experience with specific drugs for specific populations which may not always be present in the formulary. A perceived solution to this can be specialist pharmacists delivering CPD workshops and lectures, widening the accessibility of their knowledge. However, this initiative may not always prove to be the most effective in ameliorating competencies of all Pharmacists due to time constraints and travel costs. Incentivising the implementation of CPD in practice may increase the number of Pharmacists attending CPD events, increasing their knowledge and competence and overcoming barriers to accessing quality drug information.
In conclusion, this essay conveys how time constraints, confined information and lack thereof poses unequivocal challenges for pharmacists in accessing quality drug information. However, these challenges have the potential to be minimised via technological advances in the profession and peer-assisted learning.
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