3 May 2023
A collaboration between Harbour Hospice and other members of the New Zealand Hospice Pharmacist Group has resulted in Pharmac fully funding a drug vital to the care of hospice patients.
Famotidine is used to treat bowel obstruction, indigestion, reflux and ulcers. Its equivalent had been withdrawn from the New Zealand market and a replacement was needed quickly, Harbour Hospice Clinical Pharmacist Emma Keer-Keer explains.
With little to no research available on what drugs Famotidine could be safely mixed with, Emma and her counterparts spent 12 months from December 2020 to December 2021 collecting and analysing this important data, which will be added to the Palliative Care Formulary Syringe Driver Database that can be accessed worldwide.
“This is the first time we’ve done a collaborative study across multiple hospices from a pharmacist perspective and we have agreed to do another, going forward,” Emma says. “It’s exciting. This is the beginning of what we’re hoping will be an ongoing collaborative relationship.” Emma and her colleagues presented their research findings at the 2022 Hospice New Zealand Palliative Care Conference.
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