The prescription handoff in community pharmacy: A study of its form and function

摘要: Objective To describe and explore handoffs in community pharmacy. Design Descriptive, exploratory, nonexperimental study. Setting Wisconsin, August to October 2008. Participants Community pharmacists. Intervention Brief, face-to-face, semistructured interviews. Main outcome measure Information on characteristics of handoffs, including the reasons for what kind information is shared during how shared. Results The overarching are done pharmacy because some necessary confusing, contradictory, or absent, and/or drug product not stock. Handoff typically consists a description problem, current status still needed, future steps resolve problem. Handoffs can occur synchronously shift change asynchronously when one pharmacist signs out at end day another opens next morning. While synchronous generally verbal nature, asynchronous handoff primarily conveyed via paper electronic notes dispensing computer system. Conclusion Our results suggest that do take place pharmacies process unstructured variable. Future studies should fully characterize this possible strategies improvement.