Pharmaceutical Care in Children: Self-reported knowledge, attitudes and competency of final-year pharmacy students in Jordan

Objectives: Pharmacists require a baseline level of knowledge in paediatric pharmaceutical care in order to be able to adequately care for paediatric patients and counsel their families. This study aimed to explore the self-reported knowledge, attitudes and competency of final-year pharmacy students in Jordan regarding paediatric pharmaceutical care. Methods: This study took place in Jordan between November 2016 and May 2017. A 28-item questionnaire was designed and administered to 400 students from all pharmacy programmes in Jordan during their final year of training. Results: A total of 354 students agreed to take part in the study (response rate: 88.5%). Most respondents (95.2%) were aware of the term ‘paediatrics’. However, almost one-third of the respondents (30.5%) reported never having taken paediatric dose calculation courses and more than half (55.6%) were unfamiliar with the term ‘off-label medicines’. Moreover, most respondents (65.1%) had low knowledge scores (≤2 out of 5) when presented with realistic paediatric case scenarios. There were no significant differences in knowledge and attitudes between undergraduate and doctoral students or between those from public or private universities (P >0.05). Conclusion: The findings of this study highlight an alarming deficiency in paediatric pharmaceutical knowledge among final-year pharmacy students in Jordan. As such, paediatric-related content should be emphasised in the pharmacy curricula of Jordanian universities so that pharmacy students receive more formalised education and more extensive training in this area.Keywords: Pharmaceutical Care; Pediatrics; Pharmacy Students; Knowledge; Attitudes; Competency-Based Education; Jordan.

Booster Vaccination: The Role of Reduced Antigen Content Vaccines as a Preschool Booster

The need for boosters for tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, and polio, starting from preschool age, is related to the waning immune protection conferred by vaccination, the elimination/reduction of natural boosters due to large-scale immunization programs, and the possibility of reintroduction of wild agents from endemic areas. Taking into account the relevance of safety/tolerability in the compliance with vaccination among the population, it have been assessed whether today enough scientific evidences are available to support the use of dTap-IPV booster in preschool age. The review of the literature was conducted using the PubMed search engine. A total of 41 works has been selected; besides, the documentation produced by the World Health Organization, the European Centre for Disease Control, and the Italian Ministry of Health has been consulted. Many recent papers confirm the opportunity to use a low antigenic dose vaccine starting from 4 to 6 years of age. There is also evidence that 10 years after immunization the rate of seroprotected subjects against diphtheria does not differ significantly between those vaccinated with paediatric dose (DTaP) or reduced dose (dTaP or dTap) product. The dTpa vaccine is highly immunogenic for diphtheria toxoids regardless of prior vaccination history (2 + 1 and 3 + 1 schedules).