A study looking at improving the way cancer pain is managed in the community (IMPACCT)

Cancer type:

All cancer types

Status:

Results

Phase:

Other

This study was done to find out if community pharmacists can help people with cancer manage their pain at home. It was part of a larger programme called IMPACCT. This aims to improve the lives of people with cancer and their carers.

This part of the study was open for people to join between 2015 and 2017. The team published the results in 2019.

More about this trial

Many people with advanced cancer have pain at some point. This can often be managed with painkillers, other treatments and coping techniques. Some people have pain that could be managed better.

Pharmacists based in the community provide services to help people with their medications, including painkillers. This study was done to test a new pain medicine service for people with cancer.

The main aim of the study was to find out what people thought about seeing their local pharmacist to help with pain control.

Summary of results

Study design

This study was for people who were taking painkillers for pain caused by advanced cancer. They were at home, not in a hospital.

People who took part had either 1 meeting or 2 phone calls with a local pharmacist.

The pharmacist:

talked about any issues people had with their pain or medications
reviewed the medications they were on
suggested changes and contacted the GP where necessary

Results
A total of 19 people had a consultation with a local pharmacist:

5 people had 1 face to face meeting
14 people had 2 phone calls

Diagram 1

The results showed that the pharmacist:

found that 17 people (89%) had a total of 47 issues related to their medications
gave advice to 17 people about 34 of the issues
referred 8 people to other healthcare professionals for advice on 13 of the issues

Two people (11%) taking part didn’t have any issues.

Diagram 2

The people taking part were asked to complete a questionnaire about the service. And 8 out of 11 people (73%) who returned the questionnaire said they would recommend it.

Conclusion
The research team concluded that the service was acceptable to patients and pharmacists. It helped resolve problems. They suggest a larger study is done.

More detailed information
There is more information about this research in the reference below.

Please note, this article is not in plain English. It has been written for health care professionals and researchers.

A community pharmacist medicines optimisation service for patients with advanced cancer pain: a proof of concept study
Z Edwards and others
International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy, 2019. Volume 41, pages 700 -710.

Where this information comes from
We have based this summary on the information in the article above. This has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) and published in a medical journal. We have not analysed the data ourselves. As far as we are aware, the link we list above is active and the article is free and available to view.