Data collection
For the first part of the study, consensus was electronically sought on
the reference data in the CPWC algorithm. In Round one the Expert Panel
was asked to identify from the locally-generated list of suggested
‘clinical pharmacy tasks’ those which they believed to be necessary for
individual patient care, how long they perceived each task typically
took (this could be provided as existing local data, data collected at
the time to answer the question or ‘best guess’) and how often it would
be necessary to complete each task for each patient admission. In
addition, they were asked to identify for a range of staff groups the
time in their employed hours that was typically unavailable for patient
care. This included activities such as annual leave, sick leave,
training, and travel. Round one responses were collated and anonymised
and sent to each participant together with their own response in Round
two for reconsideration in light of the Panel’s collated responses. The
Panel were asked additional questions in Round two to gain clarity on
elements where consensus was not achieved in Round one, or where
responses required conversion from narrative into numerical values to
allow application in the algorithm. This was achieved by asking
participants to respond to exemplar patient scenarios in terms of
activities undertaken for patients by day of admission.
The second part of the study, the ‘operator evaluation’, was issued to
the Delphi Panel participants. They were given instructions and asked to
use the CPWC to calculate answers to the three staffing scenarios shown
in table 1 and return them for analysis.