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The current landscape of medical device education for hospital pharmacists: where do we stand?
European Statement
Education and Research
Author(s)
Lorenzo Di Spazio, Daniele Mengato, Andrea Ossato, Vera Damuzzo, Marco Chiumente, Giulia Dusi, Sabrina Trippoli, Andrea Messori, Maria Cecilia Giron, Maria Chiara Silvani, Francesca Venturini
Why was it done?
MD training, both undergraduate and postgraduate, appears to be scarce and, when available, seems to chase rather than anticipate real innovation. As a result, hospital pharmacists often have inconsistent levels of training that need to be investigated and harmonised.
What was done?
Medical devices (MD) are serving an increasingly central role in clinical practice, improving patients’ health and quality of life. In recent years, the MD industry has grown considerably along with its innovation, sophistication and spending. This context requires not only technical, but also management and consulting skills, in particular for pharmacists, that should be adequately trained and continuously updated in order to increase their involvement in the patient care pathway. A special survey has been designed and sent out to hospital pharmacists in order to gauge their level of knowledge on this subject.
How was it done?
A survey, available from 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2022, was created by a pool of experts from an Italian scientific society (Italian Society of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics – SIFaCT) and shared through Google Forms to evaluate the state-of-the-art of MD’s clinical pharmacy practice, characterising the participants on their training background and needs in this field. The questions aimed to describe which courses (curricular or post-university) on MD had been followed by the participants to individuate the best possible interesting topics and the preferred training tools useful for the SIFaCT’s future educational activities.
What has been achieved?
Out of 142 responses, only 36 (25%) declared to have followed specific training courses on MDs while 102 (72%) stated that they were self-taught in this matter. 138 participants (97%) stated the need to broaden their knowledge through: training meeting (34%), sharing of procedures and/or operating instructions (33%), access to short editorial contributions (23%) and scientific studies (10%). The three most requested topics for future trainings were: innovative MDs and innovation governance (HTA), updates on legislation and technical insights on specific classes of MDs.
What next?
These results represent a background for developing a training project aimed to increase pharmacists’ knowledge on MDs.
MD topic, according to Regulation (EU) 2023/607 and 2017/745, is constantly updated and the pharmacist must be able to understand and implement the requirements of the national and European legislation to protect safety, safeguard public health and recognize technological innovation. Finally, these results highlight the need of specific university courses for pharmacists to develop technical and clinical skills on MDs.