Exploring the health consumers’ perspective on the burden of chronic illness and the role of community pharmacy in chronic illness management

The project will be conducted in three stages over three years, starting with interviews from key consumer and professional organisations to identify their perspective of:
- patient centred care, treatment burden and the role of community pharmacy in assisting consumers to self-manage their illness(s)
- the health care priorities and needs for the consumers that they represent or support
- recruitment strategies for consumer engagement

The second and third stage will involve consumers and health professionals in four key areas across 3 states: Logan-Beaudesert, Mt Isa and north-west area (QLD), Northern Rivers region (NSW) and the greater Perth area (WA).

A minimum of 108 interviews and 16 focus groups with health consumers, their family members or carers will ask for their personal accounts on their:
- chronic illness, its treatment burden and impact on them and their family
- interactions with health providers, particularly community pharmacy services
- health care priorities and perceptions of what patient centred care should be in the pharmacy
- expectations of community pharmacy in assisting them to self-manage their illness(s)

Six focus groups will also be conducted with various health professionals (e.g. pharmacists, GP’s, physiotherapists, diabetes educators) across the three states. This will explore their views on patient centred care, treatment burden and patient health care priorities to reveal any disparities with the views of the consumer. This information will provide insight into how current expectations are or are not met and will form the basis of recommendations for models of care for community pharmacies to assist consumers with chronic illness(s) and complex treatment regimes.

The final stage of the project is to survey a minimum of 600 health consumers and 200 health professionals to:
- quantify consumer preferences and the potential impact of selected pharmacy models of care
- statistically measure the burden of chronic illness
- compare the preferences of consumers and health professionals around what they expect would be important aspects of service delivery for consumers

The integration of findings from all three stages will be used to develop a meaningful set of recommendations that inform the development of model(s) of care for community pharmacy.