Background and Objective: Drug related problems (DRPs) can have negative impacts on patient´s health, increase hospital admissions and healthcare costs. The identification, classification, and documentation of DRPs can improve patient care and facilitate inter-professional communication. Community pharmacists are well placed to identify DRPs. Although there are validated methods to document and classify DRPs such as the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe (PCNE) Classification system or the Westerlund system, there is no uniformly accepted classification system agreed upon to document and classify DRPs in community pharmacies across Europe. This scoping review aimed to characterise the approaches to the identification, classification, and documentation of DRPs in community pharmacies.
Design: The scoping review was conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and the PRISMA ScR reporting guidelines. Eleven scientific databases and grey literature sites were searched to identify publications on the identification, classification, and documentation of DRPs in community pharmacies across Europe since inception. All titles, abstracts and full texts were considered against the inclusion and exclusion criteria by two researchers independently (DH/AEW/LSN/DS), with discrepancies resolved by discussion. The reference lists of included full text and other key studies were hand-searched for further eligible studies for inclusion and citation searching was carried out using the included full texts to identify further relevant publications.
Results: A total of 67 publications were identified. The publications originated in 15 different European countries with publication dates between 1997 and 2022. The objectives of the publications varied from the detection, nature, and frequency of DRPs in prescription/ over-the-counter medications to the development of new classification or documentation systems. The review identified 12 different approaches to the identification of DRPs, 12 approaches to their classification and many different approaches to their documentation.
Conclusion: Approaches to DRPs are heterogeneous and there is still no standardized method for identifying, classifying, or documenting DRPs in community pharmacy, despite 25 years of research in this field of practice. This scoping review highlights the need for the development and implementation of a standardized system for community pharmacy service provision and patient safety.