MétaCan
Menu
← Back to cohort
Record W4415443926 · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0333829

Exploring perceived barriers, facilitators, and team roles in addressing prescribing cascades in primary care teams: Insights from interprofessional focus groups

2025· article· en· W4415443926 on OpenAlexafffundabout
Sameera Toenjes, M. Christine Rodriguez, Sara J. T. Guilcher, Colleen Metge, Barbara Farrell, Lianne Jeffs, Lisa McCarthy

Bibliographic record

VenuePLoS ONE · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicPharmaceutical Practices and Patient Outcomes
Canadian institutionsTrillium Health CentreUniversity of WaterlooLunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research InstituteBruyèreUniversity of OttawaUniversity of ManitobaWomen's College HospitalUniversity of Toronto
FundersLeslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto
KeywordsPrimary carePsychological interventionFocus groupFocus (optics)MEDLINEQualitative research

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Prescribing cascades are common contributors to medication-related harm. Primary care clinicians who practice in interprofessional teams may be well positioned to address cascades in practice; although, the factors that influence their ability to do so in this particular setting are largely unknown. Our study aimed to explore perceived barriers and facilitators that influence the identification, investigation, and management of prescribing cascades as experienced by primary care teams and each profession's role in addressing cascades. METHODS: Physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists practicing in primary care teams in Ontario, Canada participated in a series of intra-professional and interprofessional focus groups. The focus groups explored clinician perspectives about factors that influence their ability to address cascades. Discussion and analyses were guided by the Theoretical Domains Framework and the Behaviour Change Wheel. RESULTS: Sixteen clinicians participated in four intra-professional and one interprofessional focus groups. Thematic analysis resulted in two main themes. First, multiple factors influenced primary care teams' ability to address prescribing cascades. Cascades were considered complex in terms of the processes required to identify, investigate, and manage them. Second, the role each profession was able or willing to play varied based on their capability, opportunity, and motivation. Nurse practitioners and physicians felt best equipped to prevent cascades within a patient visit, while pharmacists endorsed being able and willing to address existing cascades. CONCLUSION: The ability to address prescribing cascades is influenced by multiple factors and varied across professions within interprofessional primary care teams. The study findings provide additional information necessary for the design of future interventions to assist clinicians with addressing cascades. Future research should engage patients, caregivers, and community pharmacists to further explore their roles in addressing prescribing cascades.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.025
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.036
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: Qualitative
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.025
Threshold uncertainty score0.134

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0250.036
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0070.004
Scholarly communication0.0030.003
Open science0.0020.006
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.152
GPT teacher head0.332
Teacher spread0.180 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designQualitative
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venuePLoS ONE→Same topicPharmaceutical Practices and Patient Outcomes→French-language works237,207→