CRE Researchers Present A New Publication

The Centre of Research Excellence researchers are proud to present a new publication “Primary care pharmacists’ knowledge and their perception of primary healthcare professionals’ role in managing inflammatory bowel disease: a cross-sectional study in Australia”- a collaborative work between Sharmila S Prasad, Simon Keely, Nicholas J Talley, Kerith Duncanson, Therése Kairuz, Michael P Jones, and Marjorie M Walker.

The paper discusses the complexity and challenges of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) management, and why it requires a multidisciplinary approach. While pharmacists are often the first point of contact for patients with IBD symptoms or disease relapse, there is scant literature on pharmacists’ knowledge in IBD management. We conducted a survey  exploring pharmacists’ knowledge, potential educational needs and their perception of pharmacists and other healthcare professionals’ roles in managing patients with IBD.

Fifty-two respondents completed the survey, with the overall knowledge score for most respondents categorised as ‘low’ to ‘average’. Pharmacists scored highest for knowledge regarding their understanding of the role and importance of vaccination in IBD (94.2%; n = 49). As expected, pharmacists who had exposure to patients with IBD demonstrated better knowledge scores than those without exposure to IBD patients in their practice (p = 0.005). Further, general practitioners (GPs) were perceived as the key care providers to IBD patients, while pharmacists considered themselves as equally important in providing medication-related information to patients.

This study indicated that pharmacists’ knowledge of IBD and its management was suboptimal; however with education and training, there are opportunities for pharmacists to play a more active role in managing patients with IBD.

You can access the full paper here.