Optimizing the immunization activities of community chain pharmacists: Insights from a national survey

Abstract

Objectives: To assess (1) the practices, attitudes, and perceptions of immunizing chain community pharmacists regarding implementation of immunization services per the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) Standards of Adult Immunization Practice and (2) how community pharmacists view the effectiveness of corporate initiatives toward improving immunization volumes.

Design: Following extensive formative research and pilot-testing, a cross-sectional survey was administered electronically to chain community pharmacists over a 4-week period.

Setting and participants: Respondents were chain community pharmacists engaged in year-round immunization in the United States, randomly sampled from a list of 9717 maintained by the American Pharmacists Association.

Outcome measures: Pharmacists' reports of immunization volumes, patterns of time use, perceptions of time spent on the immunization process, immunization attitudes, and confidence in completing NVAC standard components. Pharmacists also evaluated the utility of corporate goals, feedback, and incentives received.

Results: The survey yielded 590 responses, with 489 meeting the eligibility criteria (5% response rate) and distributed from across the country. In total, 84% of respondents reported giving 26 or more vaccinations/week during the influenza season, whereas only 6% reported as many outside of the influenza season. Pharmacists spent, on average, 29% of their day addressing the immunization process during the influenza season and 12% outside of the influenza season. Only 29% of respondents were confident that their patients' complete immunization needs were assessed at each patient encounter and only 46% were confident that their patients received strong recommendations regarding their specific immunization needs. Most pharmacists viewed corporate goals and the messages and strategies to achieve them as limited in scope and largely inadequate.

Conclusion: In the context of their current role expectations, most community pharmacists who responded were not confident that key NVAC Standards were being implemented to improve patient immunization rates and did not view corporate initiatives as effective toward that effort.