Purpose This study aimed to evaluate clinical pharmacist’s contribution to the pneumococcal vaccination rate by providing education to cancer patients in hospital settings. Methods This study was conducted in 2 tertiary-care hospitals’ medical oncology outpatient clinics. Patients over 18 years of age and diagnosed with cancer for less than 2 years, in remission stage, and have not previously received the pneumococcal vaccine were included. Patients were randomized to intervention and control groups. The intervention group was provided vaccination education and recommended to receive the PCV13 vaccine. The control group received routine care. Patients’ knowledge about pneumonia/pneumococcal vaccine, Vaccine Attitude Examination Scale (VAX) score, and vaccination rates were evaluated at baseline and 3 months after the education. Results A total of 235 patients (intervention: 117, control: 118) were included. The mean age ± SD was 57.86 ± 11.88 years in the control and 60.68 ± 11.18 years in the intervention groups. The numbers of correct answers about pneumonia/pneumococcal vaccine ( p = 0.482) and VAX scores ( p = 0.244) of the groups were similar at baseline. After the intervention, the median (IQR) number of correct answers in intervention group [10(3)] was higher than control group [8(4)] ( p < 0.001). After the education, the total VAX score (mean ± SD) was less in intervention group (33.09 ± 7.018) than the control group (36.07 ± 6.548) ( p = 0.007). Three months after the education, 20.2% of the patients in the intervention and 6.1% in the control groups were vaccinated with pneumococcal vaccine ( p = 0.003). Conclusions The pneumococcal vaccination rate in cancer patients has increased significantly by the education provided by a clinical pharmacist in hospital settings. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00520-023-07652-3.

Background: Healthcare professionals’ vaccine recommendation is the most effective method to increase vaccination rates of the community. The vaccine counseling and recommendation behavior of pharmacists, who are among the easily accessible healthcare professionals, are influenced by their knowledge and attitudes about vaccines. Aim: It was aimed to investigate community pharmacists’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding commonly used vaccines. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted as an online survey with a sample of 1100 community pharmacists in Turkey. Pharmacists were invited to participate in the study by phone calls. A structured survey, which consists of 40 questions to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding vaccines, was sent to the e-mail addresses of pharmacists who volunteered to participate in the study. Findings: A total of 430 pharmacists completed the survey. Thirty percent of pharmacists had lack of knowledge about vaccination during pregnancy, whereas 52.2% and 31.4% of pharmacists believed that tetanus and influenza vaccines should be provided during pregnancy, respectively. Nearly 89% of pharmacists recommended vaccines to patients, mainly for influenza vaccine (83.9%). Only 31.5% of pharmacists had been vaccinated against influenza in the last season, whereas 50.5% had never been vaccinated. Pharmacists who had been vaccinated with influenza vaccine had a high rate of recommending influenza vaccines to the patients. Conclusion: The present study found that vaccination among pharmacists in Turkey and their knowledge on vaccination during pregnancy were low. Further education of pharmacists to improve their knowledge and attitudes toward vaccines is needed.

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Background. Medication errors are frequently seen in pediatric patients. Medication error studies on pediatric cases were found to not only be limited but also the collaboration of clinical pharmacists and physicians on this topic was not published in Turkey. This study aimed to identify drug-related problems, especially in antibiotics.Methods. This study was a point prevalence study with pediatric inpatients that used at least one antibiotic at a pediatric tertiary care reference hospital on November 16, 2016. Medications of patients were evaluated by clinical pharmacists in terms of drug-related problems and by physicians in terms of correct indications.Results. Eighty-nine hospitalized patients were using antibiotics at the time of the study. The median age was 42 months (range: 1-226 months), and 49 (55.1%) of the patients were male. Clinical pharmacists detected a total of 210 potential drug-drug interactions in 46 (51.7%) patients. Approximately 48.5% of the patients in pediatric wards and 52.4% of the patients in surgical wards had at least one potential drug-drug interaction. A total of 39 medication errors were identified in 36 patients' drug orders. Most of the errors (51.3%) were due to dosing and administration time errors (35.9%). The number of errors per patient in surgical services was higher (0.47) than the pediatric services (0.42). Forty-three percent of errors were antimicrobial-related, and 70.5% of them were classified as dosing errors.Conclusions. Evaluation of patients' drug usage by a clinical pharmacist in terms of drug-related problems such as drug interactions, side effects and prescribing errors leads to better pharmaceutical care.

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