A Study About Personalized Academic Detailing - Pilot Project on Smoking Cessation

Abstract

<p><strong>Background:</strong></p> <p><strong> </strong> Academic detailing (AD) provides evidence-based education to healthcare professionals in their practice setting and has been found to improve knowledge and prescribing in many situations. Personalized academic detailing (PAD) is a new initiative by the Hamilton Family Health Team (FHT) in which pharmacists integrated within the FHT provide an AD service to prescribers in their office.</p> <p><strong>Objective: </strong></p> <p>To describe and determine the feasibility of a smoking cessation (SC) PAD program.</p> <p><strong>Methods:</strong></p> <p>Design: Descriptive retrospective cohort pilot project</p> <p>Setting: Primary Care Setting</p> <p>Participants: FHT pharmacists, physicians, nurse practitioners (NPs) and their patients</p> <p>Intervention:</p> <p>Pharmacists receive basic AD training and education (upskilling) on SC; and provide education to clinicians</p> <p><strong>Feasibility Criteria for success:</strong> <ol> <li>PAD coordinator time to train pharmacists <40 >hours</li> <li>Average time for upskilling <20 >hours</li> <li>Average time for PAD session are <60 minutes and><30 minutes for initial and follow-up>visits, respectively</li> <li>Percentage of clinicians detailed within 3 and 6 months are >50% and >70%, respectively</li> <li>Number of new SC referrals to the pharmacist at 3 and 6 months are >5 patients/1.0 full-time equivalent (FTE) pharmacist and >10 patients/1.0 FTE pharmacist, respectively.</li> </ol></p> <p><strong>Results:</strong></p> <p>Eight pharmacists (5.8 FTE) received basic AD training and upskilling on SC PAD. Consent was obtained from 48/54 (88.9%) physicians and 9/10 (90.0%) NPs.</p> <p>The PAD coordinator training time was 29.1 hours. The median time for upskilling was 3.1 hours. The median time for PAD session was 15 and 5 minutes for an initial visit and follow-up visit, respectively. The number of clinicians detailed within 3 and 6 months were 50/64 (78.1%) and 57/64 (89.1%), respectively. The number of new SC referrals at 3 and 6 months was 66 and 200 patients, respectively.</p> <p><strong>Conclusion:</strong></p> <p>This pilot study showed that the main study is feasible with respect to the management, resources, process and scientific components.</p>