Evaluation of the Quality of Pharmacist-Led Randomized Clinical Trial Reporting Using the CONSORT Criteria

Pharmacists provide a wide range of health services in addition to dispensing medicines, and, thus, there have been many pharmacists-led clinical trials conducted to evaluate these services. It is important to assess the quality of reporting in these trials for their clinical significance and generalizability. The aim of this study is to assess the quality of reporting of pharmacist-led clinical trials based on the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) 2010 checklist. We chose 10 pharmacy practice journals. These journals were selected for the search based on the expert opinion of the supervisors of this study, and because of their relevance with research articles, we are aiming to start assessing. A descriptive analysis was conducted to measure the percentage of completion of the items stated in the CONSORT 2010 checklist. A data analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, United States). Twenty-six studies were included; the mean number of items met by all the studies was 17.95 (66.5%), the baseline data were completely reported in 25 (92.6%) studies, and the trial design was reported only in 10 (37%). Our study shows that the quality of pharmacistled clinical trials reporting in 10 major pharmacy journals was not adequate to meet the CONSORT criteria for randomized control trials. Stricter adherence to the CONSORT criteria will help improve the reporting quality of pharmacist-led clinical trials.