Clinical Pharmacokinetics: Perceptions of Hospital Pharmacists in Palestine about how it is Taught and Applied
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Date
2020-12-02
Authors
Aqel, Rafeef
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
جامعة النجاح الوطنية
Abstract
Background:
The American society of health-system pharmacists (ASHP) defined
clinical pharmacokinetic (CPK) as "the application of pharmacokinetic
(PK) principles to the safe and effective therapeutic management of drugs
in an individual patient". Where the main aims of CPK are optimizing
efficacy and reducing toxicity. CPK is one of the main courses in pharmacy
curriculum, as graduating pharmacists will be responsible of initiating and
adjusting drug doses and making decisions about drugs that need
therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) when they go to their work places.
Application of TDM in many studies showed improvement in patient
outcomes including achieving drug levels within a fewer number of days,
shortening length of hospitalization, reducing mortality and morbidity,
shortening febrile period and increasing medication safety.
In this study we looked at pharmacist's perceptions and training
background in PK courses contents they received during their
undergraduate pharmacy programs. We also aimed to determine the barriers experienced by the pharmacists when applying PK principles in
their current practice and explore the influence of the respondents’
characteristics on their perception about clinical PK.
Method:
This is a descriptive cross sectional self-administered questionnaire
that targeted licensed hospital pharmacists in most hospitals under the
umbrella of the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Palestine, in addition to
pharmacists working in most private hospitals in the West Bank (WB) and
Jerusalem. The questionnaire was prepared to obtain the relevant answers
that contribute to the final results. The data was collected between August
and November of 2018.
Results:
In this study a total of 145 questionnaires were distributed among
hospital pharmacists in Palestine. Most of the participants were female
(78.6%) and the vast majority of participants (71.7%) had taken their first
pharmacy degree from Palestine. PK courses were taught in 74.5% of the
undergraduate programs with most of the courses (57.9%) covering basic
PK principles. In addition 88.3% of participants hadn't received any PK
related courses after graduation. While rating the degree to which various
barriers hindered the application of PK principles in current practice, we
found that the lack of PK related continuing education topics was the
highest in importance category (55.2%). Furthermore, we had an
agreement between more than half of pharmacists about adequacy, importance and relevance of PK courses in their undergraduate programs to
current practice. Pharmacists who took their pharmacy degree from foreign
countries other than Palestine were more agreed about adequacy, efficacy
and way of teaching of CPK courses with significant association as
(p < 0.05).
Conclusions:
Improving the depth and methods by which PK courses are taught, in
addition to providing continuous education learning (CEL) for hospital
pharmacists in PK will improve pharmacist's perception about PK courses
and their application in clinical practice as only 11.7% of pharmacists had
taken any related former courses after graduation, also having a CEL for
other health care professionals will improve application of clinical
pharmsicts role as poor understanding of PK by the health care
professionals where one of the barriers that faced pharmacists in
application PK.
Description
Keywords
pharmacokinetic, clinical pharmacists, barriers, curriculum.