Assessment of Pharmacists' Knowledge of and Confidence in Teaching Administration of Injectable Diabetes Medications

Abstract

Uncontrolled diabetes is associated with a series of dangerous complications, which greatly affect the lives of patients. As with most chronic diseases, the management of diabetes causes a major burden for patients as per need for multiple medications and self-management, so diabetes medications use need to be closely monitored for appropriate administration/use. However, studies have shown that healthcare professionals have major knowledge gaps in injectable diabetes medications raising concerns of the quality of treatment that patients are receiving. Hence, a cross-sectional survey study was carried out with a primary outcome to assess pharmacists’ confidence and knowledge with regards to administration techniques of injectable diabetes medications. The secondary outcome was to determine if confidence and knowledge were correlated. An anonymous and optional survey with confidence and knowledge questions was sent to licensed Arizona pharmacists and yielded 256 completed responses. All 256 responses were used for data analysis using a Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient. The results showed that pharmacists rated themselves somewhat confident in teaching administration techniques with an average knowledge score of 52%. Overall, there was a moderately positive correlation between confidence and knowledge level (r = 0.45). In conclusion, although pharmacists were somewhat confident in teaching the administration techniques with injectable diabetes medications, there were deficiencies in pharmacists’ knowledge in areas relating to insulin pen usage, drawing insulin from vials, and injection preparations. An improved educational program that tackles the areas of weaknesses should be recommended to pharmacists to increase the knowledge level of administration techniques of injectable diabetes medications.