Early experiences with the multidose drug dispensing system – A matter of trust?

Abstract

Objective: to study early experiences with multidose drug dispensing (MDD) among different groups of health personnel. Design: qualitative study based on focus-group interviews. Setting: primary health care, Trondheim, Norway. Main outcome: the importance of trust in the technology and in collaborating partners is actualized in the early implementation of MDD. Results: GPs, home-care nurses, pharmacists, and medical secretaries trusted the new MDD technology. The quality of the GPs ’ medication records improved. However, health personnel, including the GPs themselves, would not always trust the medication records of the GPs. Checking the multidose bags arriving from the pharmacy was considered unnecessary in the written routines dealing with MDD. However, home-care nurses experienced errors and continued to manually check the bags. Nurses in the home-care service felt a loss of knowledge with regard to the patients ’ medications and in turn experienced reduced ability to give medical information to patients and to observe the effects of the drugs. The home-care services ’ routines for drug handling were not always trusted by the other groups of health personnel involved. Conclusion: health personnel faced some challenges during the implementation of the MDD system, but most of them remained confident in the new system. Building trust has to be a process that runs in parallel with the introduction of new technology and the establishment of new routines for improving the quality in handling of medicines and to facilitate better cooperation and communication.