Narrative reports to monitor and evaluate the integration of pharmacists into family practice settings.

PURPOSE Narratives can capture unfolding events and negotiation of roles and thus can help to evaluate interventions in interdisciplinary health care teams. We describe a practical qualitative method, the narrative report, and its role in evaluating implementation research. METHODS We used narrative reports as a means to evaluate an intervention to integrate pharmacists into group family practices. The pharmacists submitted 63 written narrative reports during a 1-year period. Our interdisciplinary research team analyzed these reports to monitor the progress of the implementation, to identify pharmacists' needs, and to capture elements of the integration process. RESULTS The monthly narrative reports allowed the research team to document early learning and calibrate the program in terms of clinical support, adapting roles, and realigning expectations. The reports helped the research team stay in tune with practice-related implementation challenges, and the preliminary sum- mary of narrative fi ndings provided a forum for sharing innovations among the integrating pharmacists. CONCLUSION The narrative report can be a successful qualitative tool to track and evaluate the early stages of an intervention in the context of evolving pri- mary health care teams.