From comfort zone to front-line care: perspectives and reflections of community pharmacists entering home-based palliative care.
BMC Palliat Care
; 23(1): 4, 2024 Jan 03.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38166860
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Palliative care requires a multidisciplinary team to assist patients and their families to obtain good quality care at the end of life. Typically, community pharmacists have fewer opportunities to provide services for patients with palliative care needs than hospital pharmacists. Moreover, home-based palliative care (HBPC) by pharmacists remains low and there is a lack of research regarding HBPC provided by pharmacists. Therefore, this study sought to understand the views and reflections of community pharmacists in the clinical frontline providing palliative home services.METHODS:
Purposive sampling was used to recruit six community pharmacists for one-on-one, in-depth, semi-structured interviews and the data were analysed using thematic analysis.RESULTS:
Five major themes emerged [1] Engagement, [2] Challenge, [3] Mission, [4] Career metamorphosis, and [5] Outlook. The pharmacists described how they engaged in HBPC and faced the challenges. They regarded opioid management as a burden. Moreover, some mentioned that reimbursement for palliative home care is low or non-profitable. They suggested building a platform to exchange advice and legislation adjustments so that they could pass on their experiences to less experienced pharmacists in HBPC.CONCLUSIONS:
The involvement of pharmacists is crucial to provide better palliative care. Although the present study was small and might not fully represent the whole situation, the findings could still inform future education, training, and policy planning to promote pharmacists' participation in palliative care to generalise community palliative care.Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Cuidados Paliativos
/
Enfermería de Cuidados Paliativos al Final de la Vida
Tipo de estudio:
Qualitative_research
Límite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
BMC Palliat Care
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Taiwán