Evaluation of a Pharmacogenetic Educational Toolkit for Community Pharmacists

Abstract

Aim: Over the past several decades, the roles and services of community pharmacists have expanded beyond traditional medical dispensation and compounding, and include health services such as vaccinations, and clinical testing and screening. Incorporating pharmacogenetic (PGx) testing into the menu of pharmacy services is logical and feasible; however, few pharmacists have experience with PGx testing, and few educational resources about PGx are available to support the uptake of PGx testing in community pharmacies. Methods: We developed a toolkit of four resources to assist pharmacists to provide PGx testing. We conducted a survey of pharmacists in North Carolina to evaluate each component of the toolkit and the toolkit as a whole. Results: A total of 380 respondents completed the evaluation of one or more toolkit components (344 evaluated all four components and the overall toolkit). Most respondents (84%) have never ordered or used PGx test results. Though the usability of the toolkit overall was below average (65.1 on a range of 0–100), individual components were perceived as useful and more than 75% of pharmacists reported that they would use the toolkit components when offering testing, with the result summary sheet receiving the highest score (4.01 out of 5). Open-text comments highlighted the need for more patient-friendly language and formatting. Conclusion: The majority of pharmacist respondents scored the components of the toolkit favorably. The next steps will be to revise and assess use of the toolkit in community pharmacy settings.

Keywords::

• community pharmacy
• patient education
• pharmacogenetic testing

Financial & competing interests disclosure

SBH is a consultant for Mako Medical Laboratories (Raleigh, NC, USA) and Inova Translational Medicine Institute (Falls Church, VA, USA). The authors are partly supported by US NIH grant R01GM081416. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval or have followed the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki for all human or animal experimental investigations. In addition, for investigations involving human subjects, informed consent has been obtained from the participants involved.

Additional information

Funding

SBH is a consultant for Mako Medical Laboratories (Raleigh, NC, USA) and Inova Translational Medicine Institute (Falls Church, VA, USA). The authors are partly supported by US NIH grant R01GM081416. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.