OBJECTIVES: Hospital pharmaceutical care (HPC) is paramount in the management of chronic disease and patient outcomes improvement. The measurement of patients’ experience (PREM) with HPC is traditionally performed using general healthcare and social care instruments thus non pharmaceutical care specific. This research project aims to develop a new PREM instrument to assess the self-reported value of the HPC for chronic patients.

METHODS: This research project was designed with the following phases: 1) Domain identification and characterization of patients HPC journey; 2) Literature review and relevant attributes itemization; 3) Item generation via patients and hospital pharmacists focus groups; 4) Drafting of the PREM questionnaire; 5) PREM questionnaire validation; 6) PRE-piloting feasibility for clarity and effectiveness; and 7) POST-piloting for psychometric evaluation by assessing PREM questionnaire reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) and validity (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test and principal component factor analysis). Here we report the systematic literature review conducted for relevant attributes itemization. The search strategy comprised a comprehensive set of key terms for ‘hospital pharmacy services’ and ‘PREM’. Searches were performed in electronic databases Medline (through Pubmed) and Cochrane Library.

RESULTS: The electronic search resulted in 314 hits. Of these, 312 studies were included in the title screening after removing duplicates and a total of 166 were selected for abstract reading. Of the 116 studies selected for full-text screening, 55 met eligibility criteria and proceed to data collection. Extracted data were synthetized into domains and topics. The domains identified included: hospital pharmacy facilities, convenience/suitability of the HPC, interaction and relationship with the hospital pharmacist, education and counseling provided by the hospital pharmacist, therapeutics management and monitoring and overall satisfaction/experience.

CONCLUSIONS: Identification of relevant information to support item generation was concluded from the systematic literature review, which confirmed the need for further research in the measurement of chronic patients experience and preferences regarding hospital pharmaceutical care.