Participation in online continuing education.

Objectives: The ADAPT (ADapting pharmacists' skills and Approaches to maximize Patients' drug Therapy effectiveness) e-learning programme requires weekly participation in module activities and facilitated discussion to support skill uptake. In this study, we sought to describe the extent and pattern of, satisfaction with and factors affecting participation in the initial programme offering and reasons for withdrawal.

Methods: Mixed methods - convergent parallel approach.

Learning and networking: utilization of a primary care listserv by pharmacists.

Background: Expanding into new types of practice, such as family health teams, presents challenges for practising pharmacists. The Primary Care Pharmacy Specialty Network (PC-PSN) was established in 2007 to support collaboration among pharmacists working in primary care. The PC-PSN offers to its members a listserv (also referred to as an electronic mailing list) jointly hosted by the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists and the Canadian Pharmacists Association.

Curriculum to enhance pharmacotherapeutic knowledge in family medicine: interprofessional coteaching and web-based learning.

Problem Addressed: Prescribing is an essential skill for physicians. Despite the fact that prescribing habits are still developing in residency, formal pharmacotherapy curricula are not commonplace in postgraduate programs.

Objective Of Program: To teach first-year and second-year family medicine residents a systematic prescribing process using a medication prescribing framework, which could be replicated and distributed.

Pharmacist's identity development within multidisciplinary primary health care teams in Ontario; qualitative results from the IMPACT project.

Background: Multidisciplinary team development generates changes in roles, responsibilities, and identities of individual health care providers. The Integrating Family Medicine and Pharmacy to Advance Primary Care Therapeutics (IMPACT) project introduced pharmacists into family practice teams across Ontario, Canada, to provide medication assessments, drug information, and academic detailing and to develop office system enhancements to improve drug therapy.

Objective: To analyze pharmacists' narrative accounts during early integration to study identity development within emerging team-based care.

Integrating pharmacists into family practice teams: physicians' perspectives on collaborative care.

Objective: To explore family physicians' perspectives on collaborative practice 12 months after pharmacists were integrated into their family practices.

Design: Qualitative design using focus groups followed by semistructured interviews.

Setting: Seven physician-led group family practices in urban, suburban, and semirural Ontario communities.

Reliability testing of a case-leveling framework for assigning level of difficulty of pharmacist's initial patient medication assessments.

Objective: To develop and test the reliability of a case-leveling framework for assigning level of difficulty of the pharmacist's task for initial medication assessments conducted by pharmacists integrated into family physician offices.

Design: Descriptive study.

Setting: Seven family practice sites in Ontario from June 2004 to July 2006.

Teaching pharmacotherapeutics to family medicine residents: a curriculum.

Problem Being Addressed: Medication prescribing is becoming increasingly complex, and the need for formal curricula in pharmacotherapeutics and medication prescribing in accredited family medicine residency programs has been advocated.

Objective Of Program: The main objective of the pharmacotherapeutic curriculum is to support the development of family medicine residents' pharmacotherapeutic knowledge and medication prescribing skills required for rational prescribing.

Program Description: The curriculum has 4 main components: 1) a medication prescribing framework based on the main tasks and key decisions related to the prescribing of medications, 2) 12 pharmacotherapeutic topics identified in the needs assessment, 3) a 5-step process for session design used by the curriculum development team, and 4) a description of specific roles of facilitators involved in delivering the curriculum.

Developing a tool to measure contributions to medication-related processes in family practice.

Successful team care requires a shared understanding of roles and expertise. This paper describes the development and preliminary exploration of the psychometric properties of a tool designed to measure contributions to family practice medication-related processes. Our team identified medication-related processes commonly occurring in family practice.

Elevated creatine kinase and myalgia in a patient taking rosiglitazone.

Objective: To report a case of rosiglitazone-associated elevation in creatine kinase (CK) and coexisting myalgias and review other cases identified in the literature.

Case Summary: A 42-year-old man originally from Sri Lanka developed an elevated CK, with peak concentrations of 1671 U/L (normal <160) and myalgias following 5 months of therapy with rosiglitazone. Signs and symptoms recurred upon rechallenge 3 years later.

Collaborative medication management in a team-based primary care practice: an explanatory conceptual framework.

Background: In ambulatory practice many different health care professionals are involved in the drug use process. The roles and functions of these individuals can be difficult to define, because of a lack of a common ground for discussion. Deliberating the topic is important for developing a team approach to medication management.

A systematic review of interventions to improve diabetes care in socially disadvantaged populations.

Objective: To identify and synthesize evidence about the effectiveness of patient, provider, and health system interventions to improve diabetes care among socially disadvantaged populations.

Research Design And Methods: Studies that were included targeted interventions toward socially disadvantaged adults with type 1 or type 2 diabetes; were conducted in industrialized countries; were measured outcomes of self-management, provider management, or clinical outcomes; and were randomized controlled trials, controlled trials, or before-and-after studies with a contemporaneous control group. Seven databases were searched for articles published in any language between January 1986 and December 2004.