Attitudes Towards Deprescribing Medications in Cancer Patients and Impact of Educational Intervention by a Clinical Pharmacist

Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Cancer Patients in Palliative Care with Chronic Use of Non-oncologic Medications

Treatments: Other: Educational intervention by a clinical pharmacist

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06771999

198/11OCT2024

Details and patient eligibility

About

Your participation in this study consists in responding to some questions from two questionnaires in Romanian about how you feel about deprescribing, your treatment and how you understand medical information. After that, you'll receive a brochure and watch a video with some basic information about medications and your involvement in treatment decisions and in the next visit for your cancer treatment you will be asked to answer questions from one of the initial questionnaire.

Full description

Cancer patients are susceptible to using a lot of medications, with an increased risk of drug-related problems that could lead to adverse reactions from oncological drugs, hospital admissions, deteriorated performance status and increased mortality. In time, some medications may no longer be efficient, may have adverse reactions or may lose their indication and need to be stopped or replaced. This process is named deprescribing and it's supervised by a health care professional. Deprescribing can't be done without the implication of the patients, that's why it's important to investigate cancer patient's attitudes towards deprescribing non-oncologic medications in Romanian patients using a validated questionnaire (rPATD). Recent studies from Romania showed a possible lack of health care literacy that could affect patients involvement in treatment decision. In this study, we will investigate health care literacy using a validated questionnaire in Romanian (HLS-EU-Q16). In this study we will also investigate if an educational intervention (targeting patients involvement in treatment decision and mandatory, minimal information about efficacy of a treatment and its adverse reactions) conducted by a clinical pharmacist using a brochure and a video will improve their engagement and knowledge about drugs. Impact of educational intervention will be investigated by applying the rPATD questionnaire before and after the intervention.

Enrollment: 120 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• cancer patients in palliative treatment
• ECOG 1-2

Exclusion criteria

• cancer patients in curative treatment
• ECOG 3-4
• cognitive impairment

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

120 participants in 1 patient group

Educational intervention by a clinical pharmacist

Experimental group

Description:

educational intervention using a brochure and a video with information about deprescribing, effectiveness and adverse reactions of medicines and the role of patient in treatment decision

Treatment:

Other: Educational intervention by a clinical pharmacist