Aconselhamento nutricional de suplementos hiperproteicos e hipercalóricos em farmácia : percepções dos farmacêuticos sobre o serviço e suas necessidades

Abstract

Malnutrition, common in the elderly and cancer patients, has high protein and high calorie Food Supplements (FS) as an effective therapy. Their indication does not always come from medical and/or nutritional advice, leaving this role to the pharmacist. This study aimed to characterize the experience of pharmacists in Community Pharmacy, in counseling and monitoring users of high protein and high calorie FS, by conducting a qualitative, observational, cross-sectional study. To this end, a data-collecting instrument (interview script) was developed, and applied to a convenience sample obtained by the snowball sampling technique. It became evident that for community pharmacists it is easier to advise FS than to do the follow up due to the barrier “lack of time” and inadequate information systems. From the perspective of the interviewed pharmacists, the price of FS conditions the adherence of users, and their advice is based mainly on information provided by the laboratories. The increased frequency of dispensing FS creates confidence to advise, but there is still dependence on the validation of a physician/nutritionist, especially in cancer patients. Unlike the rest of Europe, Portugal provides nutrition consultation at the pharmacy by nutritionists. From these pharmacists' perspective, nutritionists have the knowledge to design treatment strategies, facilitating the counseling and monitoring of users of FS. Studies exploring new forms of pharmacist/nutritionist interaction or determining the important tools for the development of more useful information systems for patient monitoring are a possible continuation of this work.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	Portuguese
Supervisor	João Pedro Bernardo Gregório (Supervisor)