Development of a model for nurses’ role in interprofessional pharmaceutical care Erasmus Project

Project Title

Development of a model for nurses’ role in interprofessional pharmaceutical care

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

General overview
The DeMoPhaC project allowed us to build a stronger international network of expertise on ‘Nurse and Pharmaceutical Care’. In a partnership with representatives of 14 European countries and in collaboration with students, the role of nurses in pharmaceutical care (PC) was investigated. As a result the NuPhaC-EU framework on nurses’ role in interprofessional PC was developed. This framework shows responsibilities and tasks in PC for nurses expected by health care providers in clinical practice, the labour market. The application of the NuPhaC EU-framework is an essential step towards more competency based education. Therefore, each of these responsibilities and tasks were linked to the competences they require. In the last stage of the project, a website with a competency test was created, allowing nurse students to evaluate and benchmark their competences. Transnational project meetings facilitated the planning of the studies and activities and international discussions about the meaning and the interpretation of study results. Students were trained in intensive study programs on nurse pharmaceutical care and research methodology. Partners and students had the opportunity to learn from exchanging knowledge, experiences and ideas. Results were disseminated through open access, peer reviewed publications, the NuPhaC website, mailings to stakeholders, videos, the DeMoPhaC assessment website, ‘the NuPhaC winter conference’, a doctoral thesis, presentations at national and international conferences, contacts with professional organisations and several other initiatives.

Intellectual output
A first study in 4888 nurses, 974 physicians and 857 pharmacists showed providing patient education and information (PEI), monitoring medicines adherence (MMA), monitoring adverse/therapeutic effects (ME) and prescribing medicines were considered integral to nursing practice by 77%, 85%, 81% and 23% respectively. Most respondents were convinced that quality of PC would be improved by increasing nurses’ involvement in ME (95%), MMA (95%), PEI (91%) and prescribing (53%). Mean scores for the reported quality of collaboration between nurses and physicians, collaboration between nurses and pharmacists and interprofessional communication were respectively <7/10, ≤4/10, <6/10 for all four aspects of PC. In a second study, in 340 interviews, health care providers reflected on the preferential role for nurses in PC. Nurses' autonomy varied across Europe (none, limited, a few tasks, in case of emergency, a broad range of tasks and responsibilities). Respondents reported when nurses would assume more pharmaceutical care responsibilities this could have a positive effect on quality of care and patient outcomes. However, when translating the preferential role for nurses into clinical practice several contextual factors such as education, team characteristics, country-specific regulations, and types of medications for which nurses are held responsible have to be taken into account. In a third study, a scoping review was performed to corroborate the evidence and to extract the responsibilities and tasks described in literature. Seven responsibilities were identified: management of therapeutic and side effects of medications; management of medication adherence; management of patient medication self-management; management of patient education/information about medications; prescription management; management of medication safety; and care coordination. Within these seven responsibilities 26 tasks were described. The first three studies resulted in the development of the NUPHAC-EU framework. Following its' development, the framework was evaluated by 923 nurses, 240 physicians, and 199 pharmacists. No responsibilities, tasks or contextual factors had to be removed after evaluation. In a fourth study, through literature review and a Delphi procedure, competences required for nurses to take up the responsibilities and tasks of the NuPhaC-EU framework were described. The expert panel reached consensus on the relevance of 60 competences for 22 nursing tasks. In a fifth study, applying the NuPhaC-EU framework and related competences, the level of integration into nursing curricula was questioned in 1807 students. The results showed that the embedding of PC courses in nurse curricula should be extended. In a sixth study, the extent to which nurse students master PC competences was investigated in 1741 students. PC knowledge of final year students differed between nurse educational levels and was rather limited with regard to the expectations of the labour market. Finally, considering the studies performed in the DeMoPhaC project, a position paper was published on the implementation of more interprofessional, integrated, evidence-based PC with a shared focus on patient care. DOI 10.1016/j.nedt.2021.104926 10.3390/ijerph18157862 10.1002/nop2.984 10.3390/ijerph18115973 10.1371/journal.pone.0251982 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-036269

Project Website

https://www.nuphac.eu/erasmus-demophac

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 316194,01 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN & Country: BE

Project Partners

• HOGSKOLEN I OSTFOLD
• UNIVERZITA KARLOVA
• ANASTE Associazione Nazionale Strutture per la Terza Età
• UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE
• MARTIN-LUTHER-UNIVERSITAET HALLE-WITTENBERG
• ESCOLA SUPERIOR DE ENFERMAGEM DE COIMBRA
• UNIVERZA NA PRIMORSKEM UNIVERSITA DEL LITORALE