Pharm World Sci
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Pharmaceutical care follows a needs-based approach. Cancer patients form a group with particular needs. Information about cancer treatment plays an important role in terms of coping strategies, initiation of self-care behaviour, and quality of life. In order to develop pharmaceutical care strategies for cancer patients, it is important to assess patients' information needs. This survey aims at providing a suitable instrument to measure patient satisfaction with information on cancer treatment and to reveal the present situation in Germany. ⋯ The version of the questionnaire with a total of 14 items seems to be suitable for measuring patient satisfaction with information. Additional research is needed to further verify the validity of the instrument. The questionnaire may help pharmaceutical-care providers to develop needs-based information strategies. The assessment of patient satisfaction can contribute to the outcome evaluation of pharmaceutical care. The fact that pharmacists are not yet being recognised by most patients as a source of information should support an intensified and more active offer of care by the pharmacist.
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Comment
Applying health technology assessment to pharmaceutical care: pitfalls and future directions.
It has been argued in previous issues of this journal that health technology assessment can be used as a tool to assess the eciency of pharmaceutical care by linking its impact on clinical and humanistic outcomes to the resources required to achieve these outcomes. Additionally, as policy-makers appreciate the need to evaluate projects on the basis of their costs and benefits, the application of health technology assessment to pharmaceutical care may serve as a way of communicating with policy-makers and informing policy on pharmaceutical care. ⋯ In order to raise the methodological quality of studies, researchers need to take care to define better the pharmaceutical care intervention; to evaluate the costs of the intervention and its impact on the utilization of other health services; and to aggregate the various clinical and humanistic outcome measures that are commonly used in this type of research. In order to increase the usefulness of study findings to policy-makers, researchers need to identify the multiple objectives that policy-makers pursue, and show how study findings will aid policy-makers in attaining these objectives.