Questionnaire on the Current Status and Awareness of Palliative Medicine by Community Cooperation Pharmacies

TL;DR

This study assesses the understanding of palliative medicine among pharmacists in community pharmacies and highlights areas needing improvement.

Contribution

The study provides new insights into pharmacists' knowledge gaps regarding home-based palliative care and suggests training measures for improvement.

Findings

Pharmacists showed high understanding of rescue doses and patient guidance in palliative care.

Pharmacists with experience in sterile preparations had better knowledge of palliative medicine.

Low understanding was found regarding the WHO cancer pain treatment method and opioid switching.

Abstract

Community cooperation pharmacies are equipped to prepare narcotics and sterile injectable drugs for palliative medicine at home for cancer pain and end-of-life care; however, to the best of our knowledge, the actual status of the system to provide palliative medicine at home has not yet been examined. Therefore, in this study, given that home palliative medicine is one of the accreditation criteria for community cooperation pharmacies, a questionnaire survey was conducted among managing pharmacists engaged in community cooperation pharmacies to investigate the actual status of the system to provide appropriate services, mainly pain management, to patients who need home palliative medicine. An analysis of responses to the questionnaire showed that pharmacists working in community cooperation pharmacies had a high level of understanding of the proper use of rescue doses of medical narcotics and patient guidance. Pharmacists with experience in sterile and injection preparations also had a high level of understanding of palliative medicine. On the other hand, they had a low level of understanding of the WHO method for cancer pain treatment and appropriate suggestions for opioid switching. These results indicate that the creation of learning opportunities, such as training on injectables and prescription designs, for pharmacists in community cooperation pharmacies is one of the measures that may improve their understanding of palliative medicine.