Prescriber and employee utilization of a health sciences center campus outpatient pharmacy: A qualitative analysis.

Purpose: The college of pharmacy has operated pharmacies on campus for over 26 years. Employees and patients are users of the pharmacies; however, utilization across the campus has been limited. This paper describes a process, as well as results, that was used to gather input from employees on a large university health sciences center campus on pharmacy needs and related behaviors on campus pharmacy utilization.

Methods: Two focus groups of staff and 4 focus groups of prescribers were conducted over 1 month. Participants were selected through purposive sampling via email within an academic health sciences center campus over a 1-month period. The sessions were moderated by one investigator using a preconstructed discussion guide and lasted 1 hour. Two additional investigators observed sessions for nonverbal communication; all sessions were audio recorded for subsequent transcription. An open-coding process was performed on verbatim transcripts using NVivo12. The investigator team then developed, refined, and grouped themes during subsequent group discussions.

Results: A total of 44 participants took part in 6 focus groups. Participants included prescribers (physicians, nurses, physician assistants) and staff (nonprescribers). Two major themes identified were (1) factors related to on-campus pharmacies and (2) qualities valued in a pharmacy. There was an equal split (8% for each group) on awareness of the on-campus pharmacies. Almost 11% of participants commented on the accessibility of a pharmacy being a quality valued in a pharmacy.

Conclusion: Focus groups provided insights for the administration team regarding additional value-added services that would be helpful for the campus community, as well as various approaches to increase utilization of the on-campus pharmacies. Focus group methodology is an effective approach to engage employees of a large university campus to garner new ideas to enhance existing policies or services, as well as to gather thoughts on preliminary strategic plans before implementation.