Qualitative methods in pharmacy practice research

Abstract

Qualitative research within pharmacy practice is concerned with understanding the behavior and underlying motives, perceptions, and ideas of actors such as pharmacy staff, pharmacy owners, patients, other health care professionals, and politicians to explore various types of existing practices and beliefs in order to improve them. As qualitative research attempts to answer the “why” questions, it is useful for describing, in rich detail, complex phenomena that are situated and embedded in local contexts. Typical methods include interviews, observation, documentary analysis, netnography, and visual methods. Qualitative research has to live up to a set of quality criteria of research conduct in order to provide trustworthy results that contribute to the further development of the area. Qualitative approaches and methods are recognized as a positive addition to the health services research community. Simultaneously, scientific publications reporting qualitative studies in pharmacy practice research have grown exponentially in recent years (Guirguis and Witry 2019). Even research traditions based on natural science quantitative methods have recognized the need for qualitative approaches. These approaches allow for more nuanced insights into patient and prescriber behaviors and perspectives. This process of recognition is described in a recent textbook which devoted a chapter to the importance of qualitative methods in drug utilization research (Almarsdóttir and Rahmner 2016). Going a step further, there is evidence of the usefulness of qualitative research impacting both practice and policy. One example of the impact of qualitative research is illustrated by a study inspired by the Antimicrobial Medicine Consumption Network at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. This qualitative study was carried out in several non-EU southeast European countries with the overall goal of reducing antimicrobial resistance. The purpose of the study was to reveal and understand patients’ and health care professionals’ perceptions and behavior prior to and during antibiotic treatment. Interviews were conducted with general practitioners, pharmacists, and patients. The results provided valuable data that made it possible to create better targeted awareness of the problem of antibiotic resistance for public campaigns and educational materials for health care professionals (Kaae et al. 2019). Another example is a study by Wisell (Wisell and Sporrong 2016) whose use of qualitative methods explored in-depth the reasons behind and consequences of liberalization of community pharmacies in Sweden. Dissemination of the research results has led to invitations for the researchers to be included in political hearings and public debates about the optimal regulation of pharmacies in the Nordic countries. These are just two examples of research projects which were made possible by adapting a qualitative approach.