Social Concepts as Clinical Inertia, Stigma, and Advocacy in Community Pharmacists with Diabetes

Abstract

Clinical inertia (CI), in which appropriate treatment is not provided at the right time, is critical in diabetes care. This study aimed to investigate how well CI is understood and recognized pertaining to stigma and advocacy; this influences the formation of CI and the content of medication counseling in diabetes treatment. A survey was conducted among 256 pharmacists, who frequently interacted with patients undergoing diabetes treatment, working at community pharmacies. Although 17.0％ of the pharmacists were familiar with the term CI, only 28.3％ of those were aware of its concept concerning medication counseling. Furthermore, 45.3％ of the pharmacists were familiar with stigma, but only 21.9％ were conscious of it. Regarding advocacy, only 13.2％ of the pharmacists knew the term, and only one pharmacist was aware of it. Furthermore, pharmacists who did not check patients’ frequency of visits or the reasons for poor medication adherence were potentially unaware of CI (P = 0.011 and 0.002). Therefore, CI, stigma and advocacy are not well understood among community pharmacy pharmacists. Moreover, increasing awareness of CI can lead to more proactive medication counseling by pharmacists, further helping overcome clinical inertia in diabetes treatment.