Green Light Pharmacy Research Activities

As part of the process of improving patient care through pharmacy based services, Green Light has become involved in research.

Our interest in research first began when we were trying to find out the reasons why patients weren't taking their medicines as prescribed. Through speaking with patients, we realized that it wasn't simply a matter of people being forgetful. There were many reasons why people were choosing not to take medicines the way they had been prescribed - and from where they were standing, their reasoning looked quite sound!

For example some people reduced or stopped taking blood pressure medication because they believed they had been cured - after all, the last few times they had visited the surgery their GP had told them their blood pressure was normal again.
Similarly, patients from some cultures had stopped taking medication during religious observances. Others had fears of addictions or side effects. It turned out very few people were simply forgetting to take medicine.

With no background in research we found out something that really hit home to us as Green Light pharmacists:
In the UK and USA, fifty percent of all prescribed medication is not taken as prescribed and this represents the biggest epidemic in the first world!
We wanted to get involved in research and see what community pharmacists could do to address this epidemic in the course of every day practice. We are currently running a research project with the local Chinese community to find out about medicine taking behaviour and health beliefs in this community. This project is funded by the North Central London Research Consortium (NoCLoR). We hope the results of this research will be available in the Autumn.

Further Reading

Articles from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain's Pharmaceutical Journal about our Bengali Translation service and our teaching pharmacy .