Community Pharmacist Training Program Enhances Care for Patients With Epilepsy

Pharmacists spend years learning about various disease states and treatments, but epilepsy is covered in fewer than 4 hours. To supplement pharmacists’ current epilepsy knowledge, a team of researchers at the University of Washington created an epilepsy-centered community pharmacist training program designed to improve pharmacists’ confidence and capability in providing epilepsy care.

The training program was available to pharmacists at 2 different community pharmacies in Washington state for 6 weeks. The researchers assessed pharmacist learning with pre- and post-training questionnaires containing material from the training modules.

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The modules were both asynchronous and synchronous. The asynchronous portion included 5 separate 1-hour self-paced modules. Topics within the asynchronous portion included classification of epilepsy, pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of antiseizure medicines, treating special populations, sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, seizure emergencies, and social determinants of health. The synchronous sessions included 2 virtual calls on Zoom, both 90 minutes long. They covered information on a general epilepsy introduction and case discussions.

The researchers noted that community pharmacists can participate in continuing education epilepsy programs, but they are usually not specific to pharmacy practice. Community pharmacists need a continuing education program that covers the topic at hand, while also considering the wide variety of health conditions they come across daily.

All the pharmacists in the study have been practicing community pharmacy for more than a decade and none had residency training. The pharmacists reported a confidence and knowledge boost in most epilepsy topics after completing the program. This increase in morale is important because pharmacists’ counseling services can improve the outcomes of people with epilepsy. However, pharmacists struggled with epilepsy in relation to social determinants of health, drug interactions, and pregnancy. The researchers said that they will examine the course to determine whether the material in these areas was unsuitable for community practice.

The main strength of the study were the pre- and post-assessments that tracked performances.

The researchers noted a few limitations of the study. They did not collect data that would have documented if the pharmacists had any formal epilepsy training prior to taking their program. In the future, they plan to collect this information. Additionally, the program only focused on adult epilepsy care and half a million patients with epilepsy are under the age of 18. Finally, some information may not have had enough time allocated for case discussion and contributed to a lower confidence score.

The researchers plan to improve future studies by collecting data on each pharmacist’s epilepsy training prior to the program and expanding the program to include pediatric care. Lastly, they plan to adjust the course so that tougher topics can receive more discussion time.

REFERENCE

Guignet M, White HS, Novotny EJ, et al. Community pharmacist-centered training program improves confidence in delivering epilepsy care. Epilepsy & Behavior. 2024;158:109933. doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2024.109933