gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: In order to optimize pharmacotherapy for nursing home residents it is essential to improve communication and collaboration between GP, Pharmacy and nursing staff. Until recently, there hasn’t been paid much attention towards the collaboration of pharmacies and nursing staff, although contracts between pharmacies and nursing homes have been obligatory since 2003. Due to the lack of sound evaluations, the district Wesel decided to analyze the quality of drug management in nursing homes by embedding its questions into a survey. This was part of a social pharmacy project of public health services in North Rhine-Westfalia and the department Health Service Research, University of Bielefeld.

Methods: Between June and October 2009 in district Wesel as well as 19 cities and urban districts of North Rhine-Westfalia a questionnaire was sent to nursing home management. The management of each facility were asked to transfer questionnaire to nursing staff. Respondents included only in nursing well-versed nursing staff.

Results: A total of 840 questionnaires from North Rhine-Westfalia were returned and evaluated (26.9%), 44 from the district Wesel. Nursing staff reported that pharmacies often provided information about technological pharmaceutical issues, for example on storage and divisibility of tablets. Due to the questionnaire evaluation information about pharmacological issues were rarely given. About two third of the responding nurses rejected automatic drug dispensing as well as blister packaging by pharmacies in nursing homes.

Discussion and conclusion: According to the nurses who had been questioned, the implementation of the contracts was considered to improve the collaboration between pharmacies and nursing staff. However, collaboration should further be enforced and further analyses of pharmacological assistance are necessary. New technologies instead of manual dispensing were dismissed by the majority.