Lyme disease chemoprophylaxis prescribing before and after pharmacist prescriptive authority in Nova Scotia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: species of ticks. Prophylaxis with a single dose of oral doxycycline following a bite from an infected tick reduces the risk of developing Lyme disease. Pharmacists in Nova Scotia (NS) were among the first in Canada to prescribe for this indication. The primary objective of this study is to describe experiences with pharmacist prescribing of prophylaxis after tick bites in NS. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was performed using health administrative data 16 months before and after pharmacists were authorized to prescribe Lyme disease chemoprophylaxis (August 1, 2021). All dispensations of a single dose of oral doxycycline from a community pharmacy in NS were included. Data collected included prescriber type, date, and county of dispensation. Comparisons of dispensations were completed before and after pharmacists gained prescriptive authority and relative to other prescribers. Dispensations were described descriptively. Results: Over the study period, 12,549 single-dose doxycycline prescriptions were dispensed in NS: 3900 prescriptions were dispensed before pharmacist prescribing authorization for this indication occurred and 8649 were dispensed after. Pharmacists prescribed 61.3% of all single-dose doxycycline prescriptions following implementation of prescribing authority. Discussion: An increase in single-dose doxycycline prescriptions was observed in NS. Pharmacists have become the primary prescribers for Lyme disease chemoprophylaxis in the province. Conclusion: Patients were willing to be assessed for chemoprophylaxis after tick exposure by pharmacists, and pharmacist prescribing for this indication suggests increased access to post-tick exposure care.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".