PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?
Response: We found that pharmacist-involved intervention significantly reduces patient-reported pain intensity in various types of pain as compared to standard care. The results were statistically significant for subgroup analyses of patients with chronic and cancer-related pain but not for acute pain. This effect was seen in clinical settings but not in community pharmacy settings. Educational interventions alone did not reduce pain intensity with statistical significance. Overall, there was a low certainty of evidence.There is some promising evidence to suggest that multicomponent pharmacist interventions including medication review or any other pharmaceutical care services in addition to educational interventions are beneficial in reducing pain intensity, particularly in chronic pain patients.
PainRelief.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: Pharmacists practicing independently or as part of multidisciplinary teams in both community and hospital settings can play an important role in pain management. Pharmacists, who are trained as medication experts on the healthcare team, need to have their roles in pain management expanded so that they may lead and advocate this process in the future. Training pharmacists and developing a country-specific best practice model for pharmacist led chronic pain management are essential to ensure the sustainability and effectiveness of pharmacist-led pain management service.
PainRelief.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work?
Response: Further well-conducted studies are warranted to improve the quality of the body of evidence. Future studies should focus to explore which components in the multicomponent pharmacist interventions are more effective and under what conditions. Further exploration is needed on why certain pharmacist interventions only work in some populations or settings but not in others. The potential detriments of these services should also be explored.
Citation:
Effects of pharmacist interventions on pain intensity: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
Sajesh K. Veettil, George Darouiche, Ratree Sawangjit, Nicholas Cox, Nai Ming Lai
Nathorn Chaiyakunapruk
Published:February 24, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japh.2022.02.015
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Last Updated on March 25, 2022 by PainRelief.com