Pharmacists' Attitudes Toward and Practices With Adolescents

Abstract

Adolescents often require pharmacy services, but many pharmacists feel inadequately trained in adolescent-specific issues. Confidentiality may not be maintained by all members of the health care team, and a prescription may be refused by the receiving pharmacist. Younger adolescents may face more barriers to care than older adolescents. Increasing pharmacists' knowledge and skills in adolescent issues, especially confidentiality, may decrease barriers to care and improve adolescent health outcomes.

Barriers and Facilitators to Dispensing of Intranasal Naloxone by Pharmacists

“…Specifically, pharmacists who had concerns about potential stigma towards INN users were less likely to dispense INN. This is consistent with findings regarding pharmacists’ dispensing of emergency contraception to adolescents, 30 and highlights that pharmacists’ beliefs and knowledge can play an important role in pharmacy-based preventive services. One of the identified facilitators, training for pharmacists on how to speak with patients about INN, may reduce this concern.…”

Pediatric medication use experiences and patient counseling in community pharmacies: Perspectives of children and parents

“…Adolescents assume increased health care autonomy with medication use and require pharmacy services that may go unmet because pharmacists are unaware of their unique patient counseling needs. 34 The absence of children during medication pick-up reported by participants as a barrier to pediatric patient counseling supports findings from earlier studies including observations of pharmacies and self-reports by pharmacists. 21,33 A study found that a majority (68%) of children did not accompany parents to pick up their medications at pharmacies.…”

“…28,30,31 Pediatric medication nonadherence with chronic conditions is increasing and needs to be addressed in clinical care. 32 Effective communication with health professionals such as pharmacists is considered to be a way of improving children's knowledge and self-management of medicines 33,34 ; however, our findings indicate that children and parents report that children rarely visit pharmacies, which limits pharmacist-child communication. Adolescents assume increased health care autonomy with medication use and require pharmacy services that may go unmet because pharmacists are unaware of their unique patient counseling needs.…”

Contraception and abortion information and care in community pharmacy for adolescents: a systematic review

“…For instance, other studies showed that pharmacy staff indicated to adolescents that confidentiality could not be guaranteed due to various reasons, including the type of medication they were seeking (often ECP) and their age, which created ‘false’ barriers to adolescents’ access. 16 , 25 , 35 , 38 , 42 , 45 , 51 , 53 These differing experiences of privacy and confidentiality were further demonstrated by Wilkinson et al (2014), where mystery callers posing as 17-year-olds experienced inconsistent responses from pharmacists/pharmacy staff. In some calls, pharmacy staff provided reassurance that the confidentiality of the caller would be maintained due to privacy laws, while others had the impression that their confidentiality could not be maintained when accessing ECP due to their age and the need for parental consent.…”

“… Pharmacists included were part of a state-based program and were being trained in ECP prescribing in the hope of making ECP available to women without a prescription. Conard et al 2003 25 United States Not stated Quantitative (self-administered, mail-in survey) Pharmacist Chief pharmacists (n = 948) All active licensed pharmacies in Indiana, US. To describe pharmacists’ attitudes, dispensing practices, and perceived adequacy of training related to adolescent patients.…”