The DETAILS BLOG
Capturing Stories from the Field: Reflections, Challenges, & Best Practices
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An interview with Debra Rowett, BPharm, Adv Prac Pharm, FPS, the Director of the Drug and Therapeutics Information Service (DATIS) in Adelaide, Australia. Debra joins Winnie Ho, NaRCAD Program Coordinator in a two-part conversation about a 30-year career of pioneering academic detailing in Australia and reflects on the past, the present, and the future of the field. In Part One, we introduce you to DATIS and academic detailing in the Australian context. Stay tuned for Part Two! Tags: Data, Evidence-Based Medicine, International, Program Management  Winnie: We’re so glad to have a chance to chat with you about your long career in AD, Debra! Debra: This is a great part of the job, talking to other people in the AD community. It really is a great privilege to be working with academic detailing organizations in different countries. I’ve loved getting to meet and learn from so many different people. W: I would agree! I’m sure you have some great stories of what it’s like to work internationally in this field. D: One of the things that it has really highlighted is the nuance of language. At a training workshop in the U.S early in my career, I was saying how we would meet with doctors in their "surgery", and how important it was to meet them in their surgeries close to where they make decisions. The workshop participants really politely said to me, but isn’t surgery a really bad time to detail? Oh! Surgery – I meant their office.  W: We really would have quite a different communication model if we had detailers visiting providers mid-surgical operation! This does gives us a good starting point into discussing how Australian AD is unique. Besides the context of the word "surgery", what else would our non-Australian colleagues need to know about Australia to understand the context of what you do with the Drug and Therapeutics Information Service (DATIS)? D: I have been involved with DATIS since its formation in 1991. I was a clinical pharmacist at the Repatriation General Hospital, a teaching hospital, when Jerry Avorn’s paper was published. His work on how AD could influence clinical decision making really resonated with us in Adelaide. One of the big things to know about Australia is that we have a National Medicines Policy, which aims to improve positive health outcomes for all Australians through access to and quality use of medicines. DATIS was one of the first programs funded through the Quality Use of Medicines initiative, and in 1998 NPS MedicineWise (formerly the National Prescribing Service) was funded.  W: Australia is enormous - it must be a challenge to cover. What is the geographical coverage of your AD program? D: South Australia has a population of about 1.4 million people and a vast geographic reach – the furthest of my AD visits is about 800km (500 miles) away from where we are! We work to provide AD to over 85% of all family physicians in South Australia, so about 1,300 General Practitioners (GPs) each year. We provide AD services to aged care, primary care and hospital providers. We also work in partnership with NPS MedicineWise who have implemented AD at the national level. W: That’s certainly an enormous coverage zone, especially for those core 12 people! How has this work manifested in South Australia?  D: At the heart of our program is service, and we build our program to emphasize that. There are three aspects of DATIS: service delivery of detailing visits, training of detailers, and research. We have a core team of 12 people who carry this work out alongside our colleagues who join us for various projects. Because of our multiple different contracts, the clinicians we provide services to can see us for multiple reasons in a year. Between visits, providers will ring us with clinical questions about therapeutic issues that have arisen in their practice. We have also developed interprofessional communication training to support interprofessional practice with a focus on pharmacists and physicians. Our AD programs usually seek to address a therapeutic area or clinical issue however a recent AD program we developed with our hospital pharmacy colleagues was to support pharmacist preceptors implement a performance outcome framework based on entrustable professional activities for interns and undergraduate pharmacy students. W: It's incredible that DATIS has such a focus on this three-pronged approach, because it continues to help push our understanding of best practices in AD through implementation, study, and training others to carry on the work. Can you tell us a little more about the foundation that DATIS is built upon?  D: Behavior change theory and implementation science has informed our work from the outset in 1991, including the development of the training program which was designed in collaboration with psychologists and experienced GP medical educators. Social marketing frameworks, an adult learning approach, the concept of cognitive biases, clinical reasoning all recognize the many interacting and complex influences on behavior. We try to learn from these and apply to the design and implementation of AD. We also use pharmacopidemiology methods to understand evidence to practice gaps and for evaluation. As AD evolves and changes, something I really emphasize is staying true to the principles of AD – this is a rigorous process. W: We’re seeing innovations all over the world and across so many clinical topics. Are there any unique innovations that you feel differentiates Australia AD from other AD programs?  D: One innovation that we're exploring is applying the principles of AD to patient behavior change interventions. As part of person-centered care, it is important for patients to understand their medicines, and to be involved and empowered in shared decision making. We haven’t called this work AD, but have applied the principles of AD in this research. Complex clinical decisions need to be made each and every day by providers, and it's a privilege to be able to bring providers the best available evidence through academic detailing services, part of the power of AD is the adaptability and personalization to providers along the continuum of care. We are seeing the world of healthcare change, and we have so much to learn as it does. (Part One of Two) Have thoughts on our DETAILS Blog posts? You can head on over to our Discussion Forum to continue the conversation!  Debra Rowett,BPharm, Adv Prac Pharm, FPS, has led an academic detailing team for over 20 years and is a member of the team which designed, developed and delivered the “Best Practice in Educational Visiting” training for academic detailers in Australia. Debra has worked closely with NPS Medicinewise since their inception and has provided consultancies to other national and international academic detailing programmes. Debra is an experienced academic detailer with expertise in designing, developing, training, implementing and evaluating academic detailing programmes. Debra has served as the President of the Australian Pharmacy Council and is currently the Vice President of the Council of Pharmacy Schools. Debra has worked extensively in the area of quality use of medicines, inter-professional practice, policy and health workforce development in Australia. Debra is a member of the national Drug Utilisation Sub-Committee of the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC).
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