February 4, 2008
Two community pharmacy residents from the UNC School of Pharmacy have received incentive grants from the American Pharmacists Association Foundation to fund projects aimed at improving patient care through pharmacist intervention.
Anthony Pudlo, PharmD, and Kyle Yoder, PharmD, each received a $1,000 Incentive Grant for Practitioner Innovation in Pharmaceutical Care. The grants are designed to offer pharmacists seed money to implement or support an existing patient care service within their pharmacy practice.
Pudlo’s project is a proposal to develop a telephone-based intervention to improve medication use among patients who are using antidepressants. When patients who are newly started on an antidepressant show signs of missing their prescribed doses, Pudlo will contact them to conduct the intervention.
Pudlo is a resident at the Kerr Drug at University Mall in Chapel Hill under preceptor Joe Heidrick, PharmD. He is working with Kerr Drug to develop a software program to assist with data collection and patient monitoring. He is also receiving guidance from Rick Hansen, PhD, an assistant professor in the School’s Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy. Hansen is conducting research on adherence among antidepressant users and will use Pudlo’s project as a pilot study.
Yoder’s project will examine how collaboration between physicians and community pharmacists can affect high-risk diabetes patients. It is a collaboration between Moose Pharmacy in Concord, Yoder’s practice site, and Cabarrus Family Medicine. Physicians will refer patients with diabetes and a high blood-sugar level for a six-month pharmacist intervention. The pharmacists will educate the patients about their diabetes and recommend medications to the physicians. Patients will also fill out questionnaires evaluating their knowledge of their diabetes and their perceptions of pharmacists as providers of their diabetes care.
The study will compare the change in blood-sugar level of the patients who received the intervention to results from a group that did not receive any intervention. The changes in the patients’ questionnaire answers will be analyzed as well.
Yoder is completing his residency under the guidance of preceptor Joe Moose, PharmD. Jeffrey Hoffman, MD, a physician at Cabarrus Family Medicine, has also helped with the study.
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