DOI: 10.15125/bath-01071
title: Dataset on the reproductive health needs of women receiving opioid substitution treatment and the role of community pharmacy

description: This dataset consists of anonymised transcripts of two series of semi-structured interviews conducted between 2016 and 2017 in south-west and south-east England.

The first series was conducted with 20 community pharmacists who supply opioid substitution and provide the supervised administration service. Most interviews were conducted face to face, but a few were conducted by telephone. They were undertaken to understand pharmacists' knowledge of the reproductive health needs of women who are receiving opioid substitution treatment and whether the pharmacists felt able, and were willing to provide, reproductive health support and if so, what that should look like.

The second series was conducted with 40 women of child bearing age (18–49, ethics precluded recruiting younger participants) receiving opioid substitution treatment, recruited through community drug teams in south-west and south-east England. The interviews were conducted face to face. They were undertaken to understand women's reproductive health needs when they are receiving opioid substitution treatment and whether they felt a community pharmacy would be an acceptable place to receive reproductive health support. The transcripts also include demographics such as age, number of previous pregnancies, length of time receiving opioid substitution treatment (OST) and type of OST.
description: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with (a) 20 community pharmacists (CPs), either face-to-face or by telephone, and (b) face-to-face with 40 women receiving opioid substitution treatment (WRO), aged between 18 and 49 (women of child bearing age). CPs and WRO were purposively recruited to represent a range of views on this topic:

- Twenty CPs were recruited to ensure a range of experiences and an even balance of gender, age, ethnicity, pharmacy experience (years), number of OST clients, type of community pharmacy they work in (national chain [multiple pharmacy], medium-small size chain, supermarket and independent pharmacy) and location.

- Regarding WRO participants, the inclusion criteria for this study were WRO aged 18–49 and English-speaking; we recruited WRO from different age groups, WRO who take their daily dose whilst under supervision and WRO who collect their OST doses, and according to the type of community pharmacy they attend and location.

All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and anonymised. Interview topic guides for both CPs and WRO were based upon the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF). The TDF has 14 domains and is used to understand behaviours that affect successful development of interventions in order to improve implementation in practice. For this study the TDF framework was used to develop questions for the WRO topic guide, to explore the factors that affect WRO’s contraception use. Other topics included their experiences of contraception advice and provision, use of contraception and of community pharmacy services, whether they would feel a contraception service provided by CPs would be acceptable and if so what it should look like. The TDF framework was used to develop questions for the CP topic guide on the factors which they perceive to be barriers or facilitators to providing a contraception intervention for WRO.

CP participants were recruited from community pharmacies in south-west and south-east England. These two locations were chosen as the types of public health service community pharmacies provides can vary by region. This variation can occur because the public health services that community pharmacies provide (including sexual health and contraception services) are commissioned through local authorities and clinical commissioning groups rather than NHS England so that they can respond to the specific public health needs of the local population.

The study was reviewed and approved on 24th May 2016 by the Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee (REC Reference 16/NW/0376). Health Research Authority approvals to conduct the research in the NHS were given on 2nd August 2016 (IRAS Ref: 20049).  

Superintendent pharmacists of pharmacy chains, and pharmacy owners or managers of independent pharmacies were contacted to inform them of the study, and request their permission to invite their pharmacists to participate and agreement for pharmacy teams to distribute study invitations to WRO that attend their pharmacy.