By Lynne Nakashima on behalf of the ISOPP Immunotherapy Task Force
ISOPP identified that, around the world, the role of the pharmacist in managing immunotherapy varies significantly. ISOPP has a role in supporting pharmacists through provision of education, guidance and resources. To that end, ISOPP created an Immunotherapy Task Force, whose objectives are to develop an ISOPP position statement on the pharmacist's role in the era of immunotherapy, provide education, provide advice on implementation issues in clinical practice and deliver enhanced professional development resources on immunotherapy. The Task Force has 19 members representing 12 different countries from around the world.
One of the first objectives of the Task Force was to complete a survey of members and non-members to identify the current landscape of practice and to help shape the work of the Task Force. The survey was circulated by email to all ISOPP Members and Task Force Members were encouraged to disseminate to non-member colleagues to enable wider participation.
The survey was distributed in April 2021 and was open for approximately 6 weeks. It was completed by 142 individuals, of which 74 were ISOPP members (31% response rate) and 68 were non-members. Respondents were from 32 different countries with the most responses from the UK, Canada, Australia, United States and Nigeria. 92% of participants were pharmacists and 7% were pharmacy technicians. 46% described their practice as being a specialty/cancer centre followed by 22% based in an academic hospital setting.
The top five immunotherapy drugs currently approved by the local regulatory body and available on formulary were nivolumab, pembrolizumab, atezolizumab, ipilimumab and durvalumab. Most respondents (86%) indicated that immunotherapy is established as a part of standard of care. Responses from those who indicated that immunotherapy was not currently a standard of care were collated and two themes were identified, a lack of national/regional funding and a lack of national/regional policies.
The top three roles that Pharmacists performed in caring for patients receiving immunotherapy were drug information (83%), storage of immunotherapy (79%) and preparation of immunotherapy (78%). The top three roles that Pharmacy Technicians performed in caring for patients on immunotherapy were preparation of immunotherapy (77%), storage of immunotherapy (77%) and inventory management (70%).
While approximately 2/3 of respondents indicated some availability of clinical practice guidelines, only 42% indicated that educational programs are available and 45% indicated that they are not completely confident in providing safe and effective care for patients on immunotherapy. Respondents identified that the three immunotherapy tools that would be most valuable were educational programs, clinical practice guidelines and webinars about recent new advances in immunotherapy.
The results of this survey are extremely valuable in understanding the current landscape around the world. Thank you to all who took time to complete this survey! These results indicate that there's a need for ISOPP to develop an Immunotherapy Tool Kit to assist members in their roles and gives the Task Force some priorities for their work.
The ISOPP Immunotherapy Task Force is now hard at work developing a position statement, and an Immunotherapy Tool Kit and looks forward to sharing the work with the membership!
Thank you to all the Task Force members for their work in developing this information! We look forward to sharing more in the future.
Lynne Nakashima
Immunotherapy Task Force Chair