-Original-

Japanese Nationwide Comparative Survey of Medication Guidance Provided by Certified and Uncertified Palliative Care Pharmacists

Rei Tanaka^1,2, Yumi Satoh³, Yukio Suga⁴, Junichi Nakagawa⁵, Masayuki Miyazaki⁶, Ryoichi Hagiwara⁷, Mayako Uchida⁸ and Hisamitsu Takase⁹

¹Department of Pharmacy, Shizuoka Cancer Center, Shizuoka, Japan
²Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tokyo University of Science, Chiba, Japan
³Meitetsu Pharmacy, Nagoya, Japan
⁴Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Healthcare Science, Faculty of Pharmacy, Institute of Medical, Pharmaceutical & Health Science, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan
⁵Department of Pharmacy, Daisan Hospital, The Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan
⁶Department of Hospital Pharmacy, Nagoya University Hospital, Aichi, Japan
⁷Department of Pharmacy, Koyama Memorial Hospital, Ibaraki, Japan
⁸Department of Education and Research Center for Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts, Kyoto, Japan
⁹Department of Pharmacy, Nippon Medical School Tama Nagayama Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

Background: As members of a medical team, pharmacists are expected to provide optimal patient-centered, evidence-based pharmacotherapy. In Japan, in consideration of the importance of palliative care, a system was initiated for certifying palliative care pharmacists in 2010. However, no studies have evaluated the usefulness of board certification in palliative pharmacy. Therefore, we surveyed the status of medication guidance for the physical and psychological symptoms of patients receiving palliative care and compared the medication guidance provided by certified and uncertified pharmacists.
Methods: The survey was conducted in February and March 2022. Pharmacists registered as members of the Japanese Society of Pharmaceutical Palliative Care and Sciences were surveyed by using a web-based questionnaire and 209 pharmacists responded: the certified pharmacist group comprised 123 (58.9%) pharmacists and the uncertified pharmacist group comprised 86 (41.1%) pharmacists.
Results: The certified pharmacist group provided better and more frequent medication guidance, according to responses to four of the six items related to pain relief. Three items were related to non-pain symptom relief, and one of the four items was related to psychiatric symptom relief (P < 0.05). The study showed that the certified pharmacist group received a better rating than the uncertified pharmacist group for involvement in palliative pharmacotherapy leading to improvement of patient quality of life (P < 0.05).
Conclusion: As compared with uncertified pharmacists, certified pharmacists intervened more proactively and provided a broader range of palliative care.

J Nippon Med Sch 2023; 90: 449-459

Keywords
palliative care, pharmacists, drug utilization review, certification

Correspondence to
Rei Tanaka, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shonan University of Medical Sciences, 16-10 Kamishinano, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 244-0806, Japan
32114152@alumni.tus.ac.jp

Received, December 10, 2022
Accepted, May 22, 2023