Background:
The provision of medicine information to patients is a critical role of the pharmacist. To help support education, patients are given a personalized list containing all their cancer supportive medications, detailing how to take the medicine(s) at home along with key information. This is the first study to our knowledge to investigate consumer satisfaction with medicine lists delivered by pharmacists in the cancer setting.
Objective:
This project aims to survey patients undergoing chemotherapy to determine their satisfaction with the medication profile and to better understand what information patients deem important, along with how often medicine profiles should be provided to patients during their appointments.
Method:
Participants were interviewed whilst receiving their cycle 2 or cycle 6 chemotherapy treatments. Participants were asked a mixture of quantitative and qualitative questions about their experience using the medicine list and invited to give feedback.
Results:
94% of participants found the medicine profile at least a little bit useful in the management of their cancer supportive medications, with 77% of patients referring to the profile at least twice at home. Cycle 2 and 6 participants responded similarly to the amount and type of information they would like to receive, along with how often they would like to receive the medicine profile. Participants were appreciative to have written information about their medicines, expressing that it’s easy to forget all the information they are being given.
Discussion:
This survey supports the continued utilisation of medicine profiles as part of the pharmacist education service and how patients find this valuable. Participants described ways they think the medicine profile can be improved such as hiding non dosing time slots and the use of italics. These suggestions among others will be reviewed for implementation into the service.