Australian Pharmacists’ Perceptions and Practices in Travel Health

Abstract

Worldwide, pharmacists are playing an increasing role in travel health, although legislation and funding can dictate the nature of this role, which varies from country to country. The aim of this study was to explore the current and potential future practices in travel health for pharmacists in Australia, as well as the perceived barriers, including training needs, for the provision of services. A survey was developed and participation was sought from a representative sample of Australian pharmacists, with descriptive statistics calculated to summarise the frequency of responses. A total of 255 participants, predominantly female (69%), below 50 years (75%) and registered less than 30 years completed the survey. Although over two-thirds (68%) provided travel-related advice in their current practice, the frequency of advice provision was low (less than 2 travellers per week) and limited to responding to travellers questions. Although Australian pharmacists are currently unable to administer travel vaccines and prescription only medications without prescription, they still consider travel health to be an appropriate role and that their clients would seek travel health advice from pharmacies if offered. Currently, key roles for Australian pharmacists are advising travellers who do not seek advice from other practitioners, reinforcing the advice of other health practitioners and referring travellers needing vaccinations and antimalarials. In order to expand these services, the barriers of workload, time, staffing and the need for training in travel health need to be addressed. In summary, the travel health services provided by pharmacies in Australia still have a way to go before they match the services offered by pharmacies in some other countries, however Australian pharmacist are keen to further develop their role in this area.

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices towards Infectious Diseases Related to Travel of Community Pharmacists in Italy

“…However, it is important to highlight that in Italy pharmacists cannot dispense some medicines without a physician's prescription, and it should be considered that more than half reported that the public often asked for medications for imminent travel because their general practitioners were unavailable. This result is in line with those of a similar study conducted in Australia that showed that pharmacists had a role in advising travelers, who would not normally visit a physician before travelling, on travel-related health issues before visiting certain destinations [24]. Furthermore, the result of the logistic regression analysis showed that the positive attitude of the study participants about different health seeking behaviors predicted their real practices since those who believed that they could give advice to the public regarding travel medicine were more likely to often or always inform the public about the importance of having travel health center counselling than those who did not.…”

“…Several investigations on the knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of the general population and physicians regarding travel medicine have been conducted in different countries [4][5][6], and, to date, there is also research on the involvement of community pharmacists in this field [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. This is of utmost importance in order to provide important information for planning training interventions targeted towards these professionals to positively affect travelers' health.…”

Pre-travel Health Advice and Medical Services by Healthcare Professionals – A Literature Review

“…IeJSME 2022 16 (3): [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Another survey conducted in 95 community pharmacies in nine districts of Selangor revealed that 85% of the pharmacies provided services to both international travellers and outbound Malaysian travellers. 1 The common healthcare services provided to international travellers were monitoring of chronic diseases including hypertension and diabetes, and advice on minor ailments, supplements and medical devices.…”

Assessing the Travel Health Knowledge of Australian Pharmacists

“…Pharmacists are often seen as being accessible and convenient due to their extensive opening hours, thus offering an attractive alternative to increase the frequency and quality of pre-travel advice sought by some travellers [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Pharmacists do play a significant role in the provision of travel health services, although the complexity of the travel health services offered by pharmacists varies somewhat from country to country and region to region [ 9 , 10 ]. In Australia, although most pharmacists will at least respond to simple travel-related requests when asked, most pharmacists play a limited role, and although pharmacist immunisation with a limited range of vaccines is now common, pharmacists are unable to administer travel-related vaccinations such as cholera and yellow fever [ 10 ].…”

“…Pharmacists do play a significant role in the provision of travel health services, although the complexity of the travel health services offered by pharmacists varies somewhat from country to country and region to region [ 9 , 10 ]. In Australia, although most pharmacists will at least respond to simple travel-related requests when asked, most pharmacists play a limited role, and although pharmacist immunisation with a limited range of vaccines is now common, pharmacists are unable to administer travel-related vaccinations such as cholera and yellow fever [ 10 ]. However, although pharmacists are generally considered to have good knowledge on commonly encountered areas in travel health, such as travellers’ diarrhoea [ 11 ], it has also been suggested that generalist pharmacists may have some knowledge deficiencies, potentially affecting the quality of the travel health information delivered [ 12 , 13 ].…”