Pharmacogenomics: Knowledge, Attitude and Practice among Future Doctors and Pharmacists - A Pilot Study

Abstract

Rational application of genomics into practice would lead to safer chemotherapy through individualized medicine. The increasing trends of genetic discoveries coupled with increased adoption of pharmacogenomics in developed countries pose challenges to the presence and future healthcare professionals, not only in Malaysia. This research, aimed to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of final-year future healthcare professionals towards pharmacogenomics. A cross-sectional study was conducted by administering self-completed questionnaire (Reliability 0.82) to 247 participants, among which 68.4% responded. More than half were female medical students. The mean knowledge scores in percentage were 57.57±20.2 with a significant difference between the two groups (p = 0.002). Positive attitude, but low practice were observed which differs between pharmacy and medical students, p<0.05. Association between knowledge, attitude and practice, were investigated. The majority has demonstrated good knowledge and attitude towards pharmacogenomics, but with low practice. Studies are required to large sample and to examine barriers to adoption of pharmacogenomics.

Pharmacogenetic Testing in Primary Care Practice: Opinions of Physicians, Pharmacists and Patients

“…Consistent with other studies assessing the barriers and facilitators of PGx implementation [23,24,39,42,51], the lack of genomic education in medical and pharmacy programs and the lack of continuing education on PGx was addressed by the participants in this study. When performing a survey on medical and pharmacy students, Yau and Haque found that over 90% of pharmacy students have had a university class on PGx compared with 57% of medical students [57]. This finding suggests that pharmacy graduates may be better prepared than PCPs for the arrival of PGx in clinics.…”

Pharmacogenomic (PGx) Counseling: Exploring Participant Questions about PGx Test Results

“…The expectation among patients for prescribing physicians to be able to respond to PGx test results will have important implications for the broader implementation of PGx testing. A 2016 survey of pharmacy and medical students conducted by Yau and Haque [21] found that over 90% of pharmacy students had a course on PGx, while only 57% of medical students reported the same experience.…”

Adoption of Pharmacogenomic Testing: A Marketing Perspective

“…The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 along with the presentation of the Precision Medicine (now AllOfUs; https://allofus.nih.gov) initiative in 2015 (Mullard, 2015), boosted PGx recognition and therefore it became known for its potential applications and benefits in patient care, while other national-wide genomic medicine initiatives, such as the Genomics England are currently underway (reviewed in Patrinos et al, 2020). The implementation of PGx significantly contributes to the decrease of health care cost owing to several factors such as the drop of incidence of adverse drug reactions, the adjustment of drug dosing, the possibility of performing less unsuccessful clinical trials, and in shorten time, the adoption of a personalized therapeutic approach based on a patient genetic makeup (Yau and Haque, 2016;Klein et al, 2017). All these positive aspects drew public's attention and gained unexpected popularity in many countries such as the example of Singapore and the launch of a 10-years program of Precision Health Research (https://www.npm.sg), resulting in its wider application in the clinical setting.…”