Designing a theory and evidence informed pharmacogenomic testing service in community pharmacy in England.

Introduction

Pharmacogenomics (PGx) uses DNA to predict an individual's response to a medicine. Internationally, the delivery of PGx is frequently via community pharmacies, who can take a saliva sample, send it off for analysis and contribute to the final clinical decision making. No similar service has been set up in England.

Aim

To identify the barriers, enablers and Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) to inform a service specification for delivery of a community pharmacy based PGx service in England.

Method

This qualitative co-design research study was designed in three stages using action-orientated theory-based frameworks and tools. The first stage mapped perceptions, barriers to, and enablers for, implementing a community pharmacy based PGx service, derived from a previous qualitative study onto the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF). The second stage utilised the Theory and Techniques Tool (TTT) to link the identified TDF domain with corresponding BCTs. The final stage used a Delphi survey followed by a Nominal Group Technique session to facilitate community pharmacists selecting their preferred BCTs to include in a service specification.

Results

The existing qualitative data were mapped onto six TDF domains: Knowledge, Skills, Social/professional role and identity, Optimism, Beliefs about Consequences, and Environmental context and resources. Forty-six BCTs were identified using the TTT and the consensus methods resulted in nine selected BCTs: Review outcome goal(s), Feedback on behaviour, Instruction on how to perform behaviour, Demonstration of the behaviour, Credible source and Adding objects to the environment.

Conclusion

Using a range of action-orientated theoretical frameworks and tools, pragmatic BCTs have been identified as part of a co-design process, which can now be used as the basis to develop a service specification for the implementation of a PGx testing service in a community pharmacy setting in England.