OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to determine the impact of a printed educational module on reducing the repetition rate of routine digital chest radiography among radiographers in Makkah Region tertiary hospitals.
METHODS: A quasi-experimental time series with a control group will be conducted in Makkah Region tertiary hospitals for 8 months starting in the second quarter of 2017. Four hospitals out of 5 in the region will be selected; 2 of them will be selected as the control group and the other 2 as the intervention group. Stratification and a simple random sampling technique will be used to sample 56 radiographers in each group. Pre- and postintervention assessments will be conducted to determine the radiographer knowledge, motivation, and skills and repetition rate of chest radiographs. Radiographs of the chest performed by sampled radiographers in the selected hospitals will be collected for 2 weeks before and after the intervention. A piloted questionnaire will be distributed and collected by a researcher in both groups. One-way multivariate analysis of variance and 2-way repeated multivariate analysis of variance will be used to analyze the data.
RESULTS: It is expected that the repetition rate in the intervention group will decline after implementing the intervention and the change will be statistically significant (P
METHODS: A scoping review was conducted using pre-defined search terms in three scientific databases, including Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and PubMed. A multi-stage screening process that considered relevancy, publication year (2009-2019), English language, and article type (original research) was followed. Review articles, meta-analysis studies, and conference proceedings were excluded. Data charting was done in an iterative process using a study-specific extraction form.
RESULTS: Of the initially identified 681 studies, 17 studies with 136,026 patients were included in the review. Of these, 16 were randomized controlled trials, while the remaining study was a retrospective cohort study. The majority of pharmacist-led interventions were face-to-face counseling sessions (n=8), followed by remote- or telephone-based interventions (n=5) and multi-faceted interventions (n=4). The majority of the studies (n=7) used self-reported adherence measures and pharmacy refill records (n=8) to measure the rate of adherence to prescribed medications. Eleven of the included studies reported a statistically significant (P<0.05) impact on medication adherence. Overall, twelve studies assessed the effect of the interventions on the clinical outcome measures; of these, only four studies were associated with significant impact.
CONCLUSION: Pharmacist-led interventions were associated with improved patients' adherence to their medications but were less likely to be consistently associated with the attainment of clinical outcomes. Face-to-face counseling was the most commonly used intervention; while, the multi-faceted interventions were more likely to be effective in improving the overall outcome measures. The rigorous design of targeted interventions with more frequent follow-ups, careful consideration of the involved medications, and patients' characteristics could increase the effectiveness of these interventions.