Community pharmacists lack readiness to manage use of oral anticancer medicines

Community pharmacists appear to be lacking in both knowledge and willingness to properly handle the use of oral anticancer medicines (OAMs), according to a Qatar study.

“These inadequacies probably underline community pharmacists’ low familiarity and comfortability with dispensing and educating patients on the effective and safe use of OAMs,” the authors said.

In this study, the authors evaluated the readiness of community pharmacists to manage the safe and effective use of OAMs using the readiness component (knowledge and willingness), as well as identified significant predictors. The cross-sectional assessment included 252 participants, who responded to a pretested 48-item questionnaire.

A 5-point Likert-type scale was used to assess readiness, with a maximum obtainable score of 70. The mean served as the cutoff point to categorize knowledge and willingness as either high (≥ mean) or low (< mean). The authors analysed the data using independent t-test, one-way analysis of variance, and multiple linear regression.

Community pharmacists had a mean readiness score of 39.3 (min=11, max=70). Only a few respondents displayed an excellent understanding of the chemotherapy cycles (45/230, 19.6 percent) and familiarity with targeted anticancer therapy (33/230, 14.3 percent), side effects (51/230, 22.2 percent), and dosing of OAMs (33/230, 14.4 percent).

Notably, readiness was significantly associated with employment status, number of OAM prescriptions dispensed per month, and adequacy of the contents related to OAMs in undergraduate training (R²=0.558; p=0.0001).