Topic > A critical discussion of the delivery of chlamydia screening in community pharmacies

The purpose of this literature review is to discuss pharmacy effectiveness in chlamydia screening in terms of staff training, patient perception and patient perception. pharmacists. Chlamydia trachomatis is an infection that can be sexually transmitted and has the greatest impact on sexually active young people between the ages of 15 and 24. According to Public Health England (2018), around 448,000 diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have been made and the number has increased by 5% since 2017. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Chlamydia screening is important as it helps prevent and reduce negative patient health consequences, including pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and infertility. Therefore, by providing access to sexual health clinics, GPs, community pharmacists and specialist genitourinary medicine services can provide testing and treatment for this problem. When searching for resources to carry out the literature review, the database used such as MEDLINE, BioMed Central and Scopus. It was limited to academic journals (reviewed) and Google Scholar that were published in the UK and no older than 2006. The search terms that were used included “Chlamydia Screening”, “Pharmacy Services” and “Youth”. Also, there was a book called 'doing a literature review in health and social care' which helped me get an idea of ​​how to write a literature review. This literature review will focus on how community pharmacists screen for chlamydia and how to better train staff effectively to improve the quality of patient care. Appropriate sources will be used to analyze patients' and pharmacists' perceptions of these services. Therefore, the importance of pharmaceutical services and their impact on patient health will be examined. Finally, the problems associated with chlamydia screening and how to overcome them. Community pharmacy has an important role in the prevention and treatment of chlamydia disease. Ideally, pharmacists should offer chlamydia test kits to all patients who need them, but they have found it much easier to offer the test to patients who come to purchase hormonal emergency contraceptives (EHC), condoms and if they ask about other concerns sexual. Therefore, it is important to provide advice on how to use the kits, how to return them and, if the test result is positive, how to treat it. Chlamydia screening can be done through the NHS, which is free for patients under 25, or it can be done privately, so in this case the patient has to pay for the screening kit. The price of the test kit is £25 and for the chlamydia treatment service it is £18.99 at Boots pharmacy. After seven days, the patient would receive the test result directly via phone call or letter. They can seek treatment in community pharmacies which can treat the patient with a single dose of antibiotic under the direction of the patient group or in NHS clinics such as genitourinary medicine clinics. Pharmacists encourage patients who get a positive test result to contact their current partner to get tested. as sexually transmitted diseases can be transmitted to a sexual partner. The purpose of this study was to provide “patient-delivered partner therapy,” thus providing a “voucher forpharmacy treatment" to the patient's partner in 90 pharmacists in Lothian, Scotland. During these 18 months of study, the results show that 40% of patients prefer to take the test in the local pharmacy and pharmacists can treat the patient with a single dose of antibiotic such as azithromycin under the direction of the patient group. Only 4% of patients approached GUM clinics to receive treatment. This study was quite representative as it used a large sample size over quite a period long. And it determines that most patients find it more convenient and accessible to do the test at the municipal pharmacy, so seeing the result we can see that it achieves patient satisfaction but this does not mean that it can replace the traditional methods which consisted of inform the partner and then refer them to sex clinics. This is supported by Brugha R et al. (2011), who found that 76% of males and 77% of females preferred having the chlamydia screening test done by doctors. or nurses and 90% of participants did not want to take the test in a community pharmacy. Almost all patients refused to be tested in non-healthcare settings. This was due to embarrassment in talking about their sex life and concerns about pharmacists' lack of knowledge. This shows that a high quality of care has not been achieved, so reassures the member of the public that pharmacy staff have the ability and knowledge to carry out the test so they can trust them. Therefore, we can gain more positive patient perceptions of pharmacy services and thus possibly have a greater impact on the outcomes of other patients receiving the service. The research was conducted in 3 community pharmacies in South East London and the duration of the research was 3 months. They used different methods such as questionnaires and interviews. 80 questionnaires were completed by patients after the consultation and 24 were interviewed. The result shows that 73 questionnaires were filled out by women and only 5 by men. Overall, patients found it more convenient and accessible to get the test at the community pharmacy and there is no need to book an appointment in advance, so the patient can access it at any time. This study is not well representative as it only used a small sample size compared to UK pharmacists. Therefore, most of the questionnaires were filled out by women, while the perspective of men was narrow and no uniform method was used as questionnaires and interviews were used. The purpose of these two studies mentioned above was to see whether it was acceptable to screen for chlamydia and its treatment at the community pharmacy. We can see that there is contrast between these two studies and the first study is better representative as it used a larger sample size than the second study. The pharmacist's perceptions are as important as the patient's, so this is supported by Brabin L et al. (2009), decides to offer chlamydia screening to women under the age of 25 who go to the pharmacy to purchase emergency hormonal contraception (EHC) offered in 33 pharmacies in Manchester. The result shows that the number of women who were administered EHC was 2,718, but only 675 (24.8%) were offered a chlamydia kit. Based on the tracking form provided by pharmacists during the study, it turns out that 46.4% of those who accepted the kit, but only 17.6% of them returned the sample to the laboratory and then 9.1% of them were positive for chlamydia. This study was limited to female shoppers.