This case study provides insight into the challenges of designing, implementing and evaluating an oral health intervention in the context of community pharmacies. The process of intervention is the source of focus but we also decided to incorporate a contextual backdrop to our study, so that if readers choose to use the same or a similar approach, they are aware of potential differences in approach that context specificity might dictate.
The aim of the project was to explore the potential for community pharmacies to engage patients from deprived areas in their oral health. This was defined as a ‘brief intervention’ and it was designed and administered to over 1000 patients over a three-month period. The scale of the study did not facilitate long-term follow-up of patients, which would have been useful to assess the impact on individual and collective oral health outcomes, but a mixed methods approach was utilised to evaluate both patients and service provider experiences. These qualitative perceptions were important in establishing the potential to roll out the intervention further and to co-construct knowledge of the intervention with the people administering and undertaking it.
In the study, a patient evaluation questionnaire was used to assess patients’ perceived knowledge of oral health practices, intentions to change current practices and the acceptability of this service in a pharmacy setting. A qualitative exploration was undertaken with service providers and the data collected was thematically analysed to identify issues or relevance and significance from service providers.