Reducing corticosteroid phobia in pharmacy staff and parents of children with atopic dermatitis

Abstract

Background Besides physicians, pharmacy staff has an important role to inform patients on appropriate medication use. However, they might also experience corticophobia themselves, affecting patient counseling and subsequently patient’s disease management. Objective Implementation of an intervention for pharmacy staff to improve knowledge and stimulate positive perceptions towards TCS use, in order to reduce corticophobia in pharmacy staff and parents of young AD patients. Setting Nine community pharmacies in the Netherlands. Method We developed an intervention consisting of education of pharmacy staff followed by counseling of parents. The intervention was implemented in pharmacies and intervention effectiveness was studied using a pre-post design with an intervention period of 3 months. At baseline and follow-up (3 months), pharmacy staff and parents completed a questionnaire. Main outcome measure Corticophobia, both beliefs and worries, measured with the TOPICOP questionnaire. Higher scores indicate a more negative attitude. Result Baseline and follow-up data were available for 19 pharmacy staff members and 48 parents who attended a counseling session in the pharmacy. In both groups there was as decrease in negative beliefs and worries towards TCS (p < 0.05). Mean total TOPICOP scores decreased from 42 to 35% and from 33 to 25% for parents and pharmacy staff respectively. Conclusion Our results show the prevalence of corticophobia among parents. Education of pharmacy staff and targeted patient counseling seems to be effective in reducing corticophobia.

Long term effects of digital education among healthcare professionals in paediatric dermatology: Opportunities for improving care

“…After education, we found approximately 20% decrease in corticophobia, leading beliefs to be comparable to dermatologists, which can be seen as the gold standard 9 . The size of this improvement is similar to a personalized face‐to‐face intervention targeted at pharmacists, adding support to the case for digital education as an efficient tool 28 . Furthermore, almost all responders felt more competent with treatment of AD after digital interactive education.…”

“… 9 The size of this improvement is similar to a personalized face‐to‐face intervention targeted at pharmacists, adding support to the case for digital education as an efficient tool. 28 Furthermore, almost all responders felt more competent with treatment of AD after digital interactive education. Finally, we report lasting effects of digital education on knowledge of TCS, practices, and corticophobia of HCPs.…”

Dermatitis in community pharmacies: a survey on italian pharmacists’ management and implications on corticophobia

“…More specifically, several studies have identified the community pharmacist as one of the main references for the patient affected by dermatitis (Wong et al 2017;Smith et al 2020). If properly educated on the phenomenon, we believe that pharmacists could be instrumental in helping the patients overcome corticophobia (Koster et al 2021), supporting the adherence to TCT and ultimately mediating a positive prognosis of the dermatological disorder . A higher patient satisfaction with information on TCT was indeed predictive of more positive opinions about the use of corticosteroids, resulting in improved adherence .…”

“…In addition to a proper information on the treatment, many factors can influence the compliance to this therapy: corticophobia should be considered as a relevant one (Aubert-Wastiaux et al 2011). In support of this vision, a recent work described that the education of pharmacy staff and targeted patient counseling by intercepting those at higher risk, was effective in reducing corticophobia (Koster et al 2021).…”

Recent insights into the management of treatment-resistant pediatric atopic dermatitis

“…However, video-assisted elucidation, written pamphlets, practical demonstrations by nurses, and establishing doctor–patient trust can alleviate steroid phobia. 27…”