A questionnaire survey of pharmacists regarding the clinical practice guidelines for the appropriate use of granulocyte-colony stimulating factors

Background: Clinical practice guidelines should be user-friendly and confirming their penetration rate and compliance are critical.

Methods: We conducted a nationwide web-based questionnaire survey among pharmacists regarding the 2013 guidelines for the appropriate use of granulocyte-colony stimulating factors (G-CSFs) (version 2, published by the Japan Society of Clinical Oncology [JSCO]) between August 24 and September 6, 2015.

Results: A total of 301 pharmacists responded; 96.0% belonged to hospitals and were board-certified pharmacists in oncology pharmacy (n = 133) and palliative pharmacy (n = 78). In addition, 61.5% of respondents (n = 185) worked for designated cancer care hospitals. The observation that 75.7% of respondents knew that the JSCO guidelines are available on the internet indicated that several pharmacists used this guideline. A high degree of usability by pharmacists was also demonstrated, as 98.0% and 51.5% of respondents, respectively, agreed with the statements "it is useful for the work of pharmacists" and "it is referred to in the actual work of pharmacists". However, more than half of the respondents (58.4%) agreed with the phrase "there are differences from the actual work of pharmacists".

Conclusions: Their responses indicated that the respondents used the G-CSF guidelines and viewed them positively; however, the observation that about half of the respondents reported feeling that the guidelines do not match their current practice requires additional follow-up in future studies. The use of these guidelines should be routinely assessed in order to introduce novel cancer chemotherapy regimens and long-acting G-CSF in clinical practice.