The Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement research and development program is offering two news research grants.
The first grant aims to build on existing research into the effectiveness of CMI and best practice delivery in community pharmacy.
"The Guild is committed to having community pharmacists involved in the delivery of CMI, as it is an important tool to support the quality use of medicines. Our commitment can be seen through the ongoing promotion of CMI in Ask Your Pharmacist Week for the past three years," Kos Sclavos, national president of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, said.
"However, there is significant anecdotal evidence that the current format is unwieldy and alarming for many consumers, even when provided with extensive counselling."
The CMI grant aims to assess the validity of these anecdotal claims, as well as test a variety of alternative formats.
The second grant is for research on the quality use of warfarin in community patients post discharge from hospital.
The study will trial medicine management services designed to assist high risk patients effectively administer warfarin, reducing the risk of medicine misadventure.
"We know that a number of patients using warfarin are readmitted into hospital very soon after discharge. This is usually due to their medicine not being managed optimally," Mr Sclavos said.
Mr Sclavos said the research aimed to examine how pharmacists could better assist patients with their warfarin management.
Applications for both these grants are invited by Friday 26 October 2007. For more information visit the website
www.guild.org.au/research or contact
research@guild.org.au.