Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
50th ESCP Symposium on Clinical Pharmacy, Polypharmacy and ageing - highly individualized, interprofessional, person-centered care, Praha, Çek Cumhuriyeti, 19 - 21 Ekim 2022, cilt.44, ss.1516
Do pharmacists provide adequate patient counselling for oral contraceptive users?
Background and Objective: Accurate and efficient methods are needed to prevent unwanted pregnancies and their negative consequences (1, 2). Getting accurate and complete advice on the use of oral contraceptives is one of the basic needs of women of childbearing age. However, many factors play a role in the failure of birth control methods, including the lack of knowledge about their use and side effects (1). To provide useful information to users, healthcare providers must have accurate and complete information about birth control methods and be able to adequately communicate with users. As pharmacists are the frequently preferred healthcare proffessionals by the users for getting oral contraseptives (OCs) and related counselling services, their adequate knowledge and tendency about providing patient education has a great of importance (2). The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge of community pharmacists’ about oral contraceptives and assessing their willingness to provide patient education and counselling.
Method: This was a pilot study conducted among community pharmacists all around I˙stanbul, Turkey, between 15 to 30 September 2021. All data collected face to face.
Main outcome measures: Knowledge of pharmacists about proper usage, side effects and drug interactions of OCs. Knowledge of pharmacists about appropriate instructions that should be given to patients while providing OCs and trends of pharmacists’ about patient education and counselling.
Results: 35 pharmacists with a mean age of 31.68 ± 4.12 years were participated in the study constituting 24 (68.6%) females. 15 (42.9%) of the participants had master or doctorate degree. 24 (68.6%) of the pharmacists had at least 5 years of professional experience. 25 (71.4%) of the pharmacists described the proper usage of oral contraceptives whereas 10 (28.6%) of the pharmacist couldn’t provide any information. 24 (68.6%) of the pharmacists declared that they know the drugs that interact with oral contraceptives, however only 12 (34.3%) of the pharmacists expressed the correct medicines that interact with oral contraceptives. 34 (97.1%) of the pharmacists declared that they know the side effects of oral contraceptives. The most commonly expressed side effects by the pharmacists were nausea-vomiting 14 (17.3%), headache 12 (14.9%) and irregular menstrual periods 5 (6.2%). 27 (77.1%) of the pharmacists declared that they provide patient education about OCs. The most commonly mentioned topics regarding patient education were proper OC usage 21 (56.8%), missed dose 7 (18.9%) and drug interactions 4 (10.8%).
Conclusion: The results of this study has shown that approximately 1 of 4 pharmacists don’t know the proper usage of OCs. 2 of 3 pharmacists don’t know about the drug-drug interactions. A pharmacist who does not have pharmacotherapeutic knowledge of OCs will either miss an opportunity to educate women who get their OCs from pharmacies or will provide potential users incorrect information which might cause unwanted pregnancies. Therefore it is critical to increase knowledge of pharmacists about OCs by organizing in-professional training.
Disclosure of Interest: None Declared.
References: (1) Sattari M, Mokhtari Z, et al. Knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacists and health-care workers regarding oral contraceptives correct usage, side-effects and contraindications. East Mediterr Health J. 2013;19(6):547–554.
(2) Amin MEK. Pharmacists’ knowledge and interest in developing
counselling skills relating to oral contraceptives. Int J Clin Pharm.
2016;38(2):395–403.