An educational intervention to train community pharmacists in providing specialized asthma care

Objectives. The development, implementation, and evaluation of an educational intervention to facilitate specialized asthma care provision by community pharmacists. Design. Formative evaluation and a parallel group repeated measures design were used to test the effect of an educational intervention on pharmacist satisfaction and practice behavior as well as patient outcomes. The educational intervention was based on practitioner needs and principles of adult learning using flexible delivery formats. Assessment. In the intervention area, 15 pharmacists were trained with the educational intervention, and they provided specialized asthma care to 52 patients over 6 months, while in the control area, 12 pharmacists provided "usual care" to 50 patients. The intervention pharmacists were highly satisfied with the education received and rated most aspects highly. Improvements in patient clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes in the intervention area were obtained. Conclusion. The positive results of the educational intervention demonstrate the effectiveness of an educational approach grounded in the theory that inducing behavioral changes in pharmacy practitioners results in improved patient outcomes.