Cancer, Palliative Care
Conditions
Keywords
palliative care, cancer, clinical pharmacist, educational intervention, rPATD
Brief summary
Participation in this study consists in responding to some questions from two questionnaires in Romanian about how participants feel about deprescribing, participants' treatment and how participants understand medical information. After that, participants will receive a brochure and watch a video with some basic information about medications and participants' involvement in treatment decisions and in the next visit for cancer treatment participants will be asked to answer questions from one of the initial questionnaire.
Detailed 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, will investigate health care literacy using a validated questionnaire in Romanian (HLS-EU-Q16). In this study investigators will also study 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.
Interventions
OTHEREducational intervention by a clinical pharmacist
All participants will respond to two questionnaires, both validated in Romanian and some demographic information. One is the rPATD questionnaire that investigate attitudes towards deprescribing of medication and the other one is the HLS-EU-Q16 that investigates medical literacy of participants. After completion, the clinical pharmacist will give a brochure and a video about the process of deprescribing, information about the efficacy and the adverse reactions of medicines and the role of pacient in treatment decision. When participants come to another cancer treatment (after 14 , 21 or 28 days), the rPATD will be completed again.
Sponsors
Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy
Study design
Allocation
NA
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
OTHER
Masking
NONE
Intervention model description
All participants will respond to two questionnaires, both validated in Romanian and some demographic information. One is the rPATD questionnaire that investigate attitudes towards deprescribing of medication and the other one is the HLS-EU-Q16 that investigates medical literacy of participants. After completion, the clinical pharmacist will give a brochure and a video about the process of deprescribing, information about the efficacy and the adverse reactions of medicines and the role of pacient in treatment decision. When participants come to another cancer treatment (after 14, 21 or 28 days), the rPATD will be completed again.
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* cancer patients in palliative treatment * ECOG 1-2
Exclusion criteria
* cancer patients in curative treatment * ECOG 3-4 * cognitive impairment
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Impact of educational intervention performed by clinical pharmacist | from enrollment to the next cycle of oncological treatment (14, 21 or 28 days days) | Participants will be asked to complete the same questionnaire before and after an educational intervention in order to assess if this kind of educational intervention is suitable for Romanian participants. Based on answers given to the same questions before and after the intervention, investigators can see if and what is changed in the perception of participants. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Attitudes towards deprescribing medications in cancer patients in palliative treatment | from enrollment to the next cycle of oncological treatment (14, 21 or 28 days days) when they answer the second time | Using the rPATD questionnaire (revised Patients Attitudes Towards Deprescribing ), investigators assess if Romanian cancer patients are willing to have their medication deprescribed. The questionnaire has 4 factors: Burden, Appropriateness, Involvement and Concerns about Stopping. Each factor consists of 5 statements and participants are invited to respond to a 5-point Likert scale (strongly agree =5, agree =4, unsure =3, disagree =2, strongly disagree =1). Factors' scores are calculated as the average of the summed score for the five statements pertaining to each factor, with a final score per factor ranging from 1 to 5. A higher score indicates a greater perceived burden, higher concerns about stopping and greater involvement in medication related decisions. The appropriateness factor is reversed scored so that a higher score indicates a greater belief in the appropriateness of current medications |
| The level of health literacy | at enrollment | Using the questionnaire HLS-EU-Q16 investigators can asses the level of health literacy of participants. Each of the 16 items are scored on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ("very difficult") to 4 ("very easy"). For interpretation of the final score, all items of the scale are summed, giving a score ranging between 0 (no health literacy) to 16 (high health literacy). For ease of interpretability, the three levels are identified: inadequate health literacy (0-8), problematic health literacy \[9-12\], and sufficient health literacy |
Countries
Romania
Contacts
CONTACTMihaela I Clinical pharmacist, PhD student
Outcome results
None listed