[Hospital - community pharmacy coordination for the dispensing of oral antineoplastic drugs: An observational study in the French county of the Aveyron]

INTRODUCTION

The growing number of oral antineoplastic agents delivered by French community pharmacies has modified the job and roles of community pharmacists. Coordination between hospitals (oncology centers) and community pharmacies has become essential for a quality work in this field. The goal of this work was to obtain information about the feeling of the community pharmacies teams in a French county (Aveyron) regarding the communication tools offered by various hospitals with an oncology service (when receiving a beginning prescription for an oral antineoplastic drug), and to evaluate the impact of these tools on their practice.

METHODS

A declarative survey was submitted to the 109 community pharmacies of this county to evaluate their relationship with their nearest oncology centers (including communication tools) and collect their opinion on the quality of the coordination and their pharmaceutical exercise.

RESULTS

The response rate was of 54% (59 community pharmacies). Communication between the oncology centers and the pharmacies was limited (only 50% of the pharmacies received information complementary to the prescription), the available tools were not used very frequently (44% of pharmacies didn't use shared medical records) and there was a strong feeling of rupture between the pharmacies and the oncology centers, impacting the quality of their work (46% of respondents indicated being little or incapable of correctly validating the indication of the anticancer drug).

DISCUSSION

This study illustrates the under-use of the available hospital-community pharmacy communication tools and the fact that the pharmacies feel difficulties to correctly deliver oral antineoplastic medications due to a lack of information.