Pharmacy Role In proMotion of continencE (PRIME)

Project details

Project title: Pharmacy Role in proMotion of continencE (PRIME)

Project duration: October 2021 to March 2023

Funder: NIHR – Research for Patient Benefit funding stream; ref: NIHR202212

Study team

• Professor Nikki Cotterill (UWE Bristol), Chief Investigator
• Mr David Chandler, PPI Lead
• Dr Shoba Dawson (University of Bristol)
• Dr Alison Diaper (UWE Bristol)
• Ms Jenny Gibbs (BNSSG CCG)
• Dr Hugh McLeod (University of Bristol, ARC West)
• Dr Alan Uren (UWE Bristol)
• Professor Mags Watson (Watson Research and Training)
• Ms Helen Wilkinson (BNSSG CCG)
• Mr Ade Williams (Bedminster Pharmacy)
• Ms Elizabeth Williams (BNSSG CCG)

Study summary

Background

Bladder and bowel incontinence (any accidental leakage) are difficult to discuss making it hard to get treatments that can help. There are many causes for these symptoms, so not surprisingly up to one third of the UK adult population can be affected at different points across the lifecourse. Living with incontinence can be distressing and seriously reduce a person’s quality of life. Sadly, people often do not seek help because they are embarrassed and believe that ‘nothing can be done’. 

Treatments and self-help strategies are available that can help improve symptoms in many cases. We believe much more could be done in community pharmacies to help more people find out about self-help to improve their symptoms. This study will bring together pharmacists and healthcare staff involved in providing bladder and bowel services, and people who use them, to explore the possibilities for community pharmacies to provide a service for promoting bladder and bowel continence.

Research question

What are service user and provider opinions of a community pharmacy bladder and bowel continence promotion service, the elements required, and available evidence to underpin the development of such a service?

Methods

Mixed methods study comprising three work packages:

1. What is the evidence base to underpin the development of a Pharmacy Bladder and Bowel Continence Promotion Service?
   We will conduct a review of the literature to identify the community focused, conservative continence promotion evidence base, including community pharmacy health promotion initiatives in unrelated areas that have parallels with this sensitive topic. The findings will be used to inform subsequent work packages.
   
   
2. What are the views of providers and users of community services around continence promotion in this setting?
   We will conduct a survey of national pharmacy staff to summarise current practice and explore perspectives on the development of a Pharmacy Bladder and Bowel Continence Promotion Service. We will also conduct interviews and focus groups with stakeholders to gather in-depth findings from the provider, service user and commissioning perspectives to inform development of the new service.
   
   
3. What are the key components of a new Pharmacy Bladder and Bowel Continence Promotion Service?
   We will work with stakeholders from varying provider and user perspectives of the intended service to co-produce the required components for this new development. This stage will focus on the development of the required framework and resources to provide a community pharmacy continence promotion service that is fit for purpose and feasible for delivery in this setting.

Benefits

We will develop a framework to enable community pharmacy settings to provide continence promotion for people attending with bladder and bowel leakage. This will address an important unmet need for those who are not actively seeking formal healthcare yet could improve their symptoms before potential decline. The Pharmacy Bladder and Bowel Continence Promotion service will go on to be evaluated in a follow-on research study to explore how well it works and the cost-effectiveness of its implementation.

Key outputs

As this project commenced in October 2021,  no outputs are currently available.