Patient perspectives on the vital primary care role of community pharmacists in Nova Scotia, Canada: qualitative findings from the PUPPY Study.

Objectives: Community pharmacists play an important role in primary care access and delivery for all patients, including patients with a family physician or nurse practitioner ("attached") and patients without a family physician or nurse practitioner ("unattached"). During the COVID-19 pandemic, community pharmacists were accessible care providers for unattached patients and patients who had difficulty accessing their usual primary care providers ("semi-attached"). Before and during the pandemic, pharmacist services expanded in several Canadian provinces.

Community pharmacists' expanding roles in supporting patients before and during COVID-19: An exploratory qualitative study.

Background: Timely access and attachment to a primary healthcare provider is associated with better population health outcomes. In Canada, community pharmacists are highly accessible and patients struggling to access a family physician or nurse practitioner (i.e.

Increased self-reported pharmacist prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Using the Theoretical Domains Framework to identify barriers and facilitators to prescribing.

Background: Community pharmacists are positioned to improve access to medications through their ever-expanding role as prescribers, with this role becoming more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives: Our research aimed to determine the extent of self-reported pharmacist prescribing pre-COVID-19 and during the COVID-19 pandemic, to identify barriers and facilitators to pharmacist prescribing, and to explore the relationship between these factors and self-reported prescribing activity.

Methods: A questionnaire based on the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDFv2) assessing self-reported prescribing was electronically distributed to all direct patient care pharmacists in NS (N = 1338) in July 2020.

COVID-19 - an opportunity to improve access to primary care through organizational innovations? A qualitative multiple case study in Quebec and Nova Scotia (Canada).

Background: COVID-19 catalyzed a rapid and substantial reorganization of primary care, accelerating the spread of existing strategies and fostering a proliferation of innovations. Access to primary care is an essential component of a healthcare system, particularly during a pandemic. We describe organizational innovations aiming to improve access to primary care and related contextual changes during the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in two Canadian provinces, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Awareness, Familiarity, and Pharmacist Trust: A Structural Equation Model Analysis.

Trust in health care professionals is critical in the health care system and is needed for a patient to seek care, reveal sensitive information, and follow a specified treatment plan, among other things. To better understand trust in community pharmacists, this research develops a model of how patient awareness of the different community pharmacy roles (role awareness) and pharmacist familiarity influences pharmacist trust. A survey of pharmacy patients in Nova Scotia, Canada, occurred in November and December 2019, with quota sampling used to achieve representativeness by age, gender, and household income.

Demonstrating institutional trustworthiness: A framework for pharmacy regulatory authorities.

Background: Self-regulation is well suited for health care providers as the distinctive knowledge requirements can be effectively managed by those with the specific knowledge base compared to national or provincial/state governments. Despite their prevalence and long history in health care, self-regulating professions have become a topic of increasing debate as a result of evidence of declines in trust in a number of institutional contexts.

Objective: It is important that Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities (PRAs), as the regulating body for a critical health profession, can demonstrate and proactively respond to issues related to public trust.

Media Generation and Pharmacy Regulatory Authority Awareness.

Professional regulatory authorities play a critical role in protecting public interest. Yet, there is a growing view that trust in regulatory authorities may be on the decline. Awareness has been identified as important for maintaining trust.

Barriers to the use of patient safety information sources by community pharmacies.

Background: When patient safety information is communicated across a regulatory jurisdiction or country, the potential to enhance the safety of community pharmacy practice is significant. While there currently exists a number of sources for patient safety information (e.g.

Pharmacist work stress and learning from quality related events.

Background: Among the many stresses faced by pharmacy staff, quality related event (QRE) learning can be among the most significant. In the absence of a supportive organizational culture, the potential for blaming individuals, versus identifying key process flaws, is significant and can be very intimidating to those involved in such discussions and may increase an already stressful work environment.

Objective: This research develops and tests a model of the relationship between the work stress faced by pharmacists and the extent of QRE learning in community pharmacies.

Public perceptions of pharmacist expanded scope of practice services in Nova Scotia.

Background: Community pharmacists have been transitioning from traditional dispensing roles toward a much broader scope of practice. The objective of this research was to explore public perceptions of expanded scope of practice (ESOP) services as they relate to pharmacy and pharmacist characteristics.

Methods: The Survey on New Services Offered by Nova Scotia Pharmacists was developed and deployed using in-pharmacy intercept surveys and online public surveys in Nova Scotia.