The role of a pharmacist supporting beliefs about medications in people who have experienced a heart attack

All participants will be interviewed at one, three and six months post discharge from hospital using the repertory grid technique to identify their opinions towards their medicines. In the intervention group, the community pharmacist will provide usual care (information on how to take their medication, the potential side effects to look out for and what to do if they arise) and also establish how participants are coping with their medicines. The usual care should take place at approximately monthly intervals when the patient collects their prescription medicines for ACS and should last for five minutes. At one, three, six and twelve months after discharge from hospital, the pharmacist will have a longer discussion (maximum 10 minutes) with the participant about the medicines they are taking, and will also support the patients’ beliefs about their medicines for acute coronary syndrome. This will be done by enforcing positive health beliefs about medications for acute coronary syndrome and discussing the patient's own health beliefs generated from the interview with the student researcher using the repertory grid technique. The community pharmacist will also review the participants ACS medications for appropriateness and monitor adherence. The researcher utilised the repertory grid technique at one, three and six months to explore participant’s opinions towards their ACS medicines. The repertory grid component of the interview asks participants to compare and contrast between their ACS medicines to generate statements that reflect their individual opinions. Participants were presented their ACS medicines in groups of three and asked; “which two medicines are similar in some way” and “how is the third one different to the others.” This generated two opposing poles of the individual’s opinions towards their medicines. The process was repeated for different combinations of their ACS medicines, creating a list of statements reflecting their individual opinion of their medicines. The process was repeated until all combinations of their ACS medicines were exhausted or no new statements were generated. A likert scale was placed between the two poles of the generated statements and the participant rated each of their medicines against each statement. The information generated for each individual patient formed a grid of data, with their statements of opinions as the rows and their medicines as the columns.