Response to: 'Supporting adherence for people starting a new medication for a long-term condition through community pharmacies: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial of the New Medicine Service by Elliott et al

The literature concerning the effectiveness of community pharmacy-based interventions is notable for its lack of high quality randomised studies. The publication by Elliott et al1 of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) examining the effectiveness of the New Medicine Service (NMS—a service designed to improve adherence to newly prescribed medications for long-term conditions) is therefore welcome. The paper states that ‘the study is reported according to Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) criteria’. The CONSORT statement is ‘an evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting randomized trials’.2 Regarding outcome measures, the CONSORT criteria specify that RCTs should have ‘completely defined pre-specified primary and secondary outcome measures, including how and when they were assessed’ and that ‘for each primary and secondary outcome, results for each group, and the estimated effect size and its precision (such as 95% confidence interval)’ should be reported.3 The initial trial...

Source: BMJ Quality and Safety - March 19, 2017 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Bush, J. Tags: PostScript Source Type: research