Abstract
Background: In collaboration with primary care oncologists, pharmacists can assist non-small cell lung cancer patients as they begin their new oral medications. Proper training for pharmacists in current treatments is critical for proper patient care when assisting with side effects, patient education, and facilitating patient engagement with their new therapy.
Objectives: To evaluate an in-person pharmacist training session designed to familiarize pharmacists with newly available treatments in non-small cell lung cancer.
Methods: Pharmacists from local oncology specialized pharmacies were randomly selected to either attend an in-person training or an online training at later time. This report focuses on the experiences of those who attended the in-person training only. The training consisted of a number of instructive and hands-on activities designed to familiarize them with new non-small cell lung cancer therapies. Approximately 3 months post-training, participants were sent a follow-up survey that assessed their confidence in patient interaction, comfort in disseminating information about therapy, pharmacist interventions made with patients, and frequency of patient interaction in the time since training.
Results: Of the 30 pharmacists who completed the in-person training, 28 completed the follow-up survey. Most respondents rated themselves as “very” or “extremely” confident in their understanding of (75%), and ability to disseminate information about (78.6%) current treatment in non-small cell lung cancer therapy. Many (71.4%) had engaged in pharmacist interventions since training with the most commonly reported reasons for intervention being: supportive medication prescribed for side effect(s) (65%), held dose by healthcare professional as a result of pharmacist reported side effect(s) (35%), and triage to another healthcare team member (20%). Moreover, 39.3% reported that they felt they had interacted with patients more often than they had prior to training.
Conclusions: This study found that pharmacists who completed a specialized training for a specific disease reported an increase in their confidence in interacting with patients regarding their treatment. This suggests that greater training of pharmacists may lead to greater therapeutic interventions and interactions with patients regarding their treatment regimens. This was a descriptive study and no comparisons made between the training group and untrained pharmacists.
Presenter:
Poster abstracts from the Annual Meeting and Educational Conference for NASP (the National Association of Specialty Pharmacy), September 24–26, 2018, Washington, DC.