Prescribing HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis: A qualitative analysis of health care provider training needs

Abstract

Increasing the number of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prescriptions will require more health care providers to be willing and trained to prescribe the medication. The purpose of our study was to understand the training needs of clinicians who do not prescribe PrEP. From September 2017 to January 2018, qualitative interviews were conducted with providers who had no experience prescribing PrEP (N = 20). Thematic analysis revealed four themes: three emphasized the temporal nature of training requirements and one identified training preferences of providers. Study findings suggest that clinicians require specific information in order to integrate PrEP into their practices successfully.

Keywords:

• Health care providers
• HIV prevention
• pre-exposure prophylaxis
• qualitative research
• training

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the health care providers who generously contributed their time, and Aisha O’Mally, PhD and Steven Gabriel for their contributions to data collection and manuscript preparation.

Ethical standards

This work is in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional review board and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no real or perceived vested interests relating to this article that could be construed as a conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are qualitative in nature and are still being used for primary analyses. For this reason, the data will not be made available.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute; the United States Public Health Service award GM 095459 to Gloria Aidoo-Frimpong.