Interest outpaced experience
Most pharmacists aged 45 or younger in a Japanese survey said they were interested in onco-cardiology, but the same group reported limited hands-on experience. About 80% expressed moderate to high interest. Yet 56.2% managed one to five onco-cardiology-related cases a month, while 20.0% said they had no previous experience.
The survey suggests that the problem was not simple unfamiliarity. Seventy-nine respondents, or 75.2%, reported a good or general understanding of onco-cardiology. At the same time, only about 60% had read the relevant guidelines, leaving about 40% who had not, and 7.6% said they were not aware of the field.
The gap showed up in practice
That gap was visible at the institutional level as well. Institutional onco-cardiology initiatives were reported by 38.1% of respondents. Pharmacists' reported work was concentrated mainly on clinical risk assessment, monitoring and pharmacotherapy management, rather than on building protocols or wider systems.
Knowledge and access to education were the most common obstacles named by respondents. They also described difficulty working with oncologists and cardiologists, a shortage of onco-cardiology evidence and too few allied healthcare professionals. The responses therefore covered both knowledge gaps and wider collaboration and staffing problems.
Collaboration scores differed across the three settings examined. Hospital pharmacy to community pharmacy collaboration was significantly weaker than collaboration between pharmacists and oncologists or between pharmacists and cardiologists. The overall comparison had a P value below 0.001, which the researchers treated as statistically significant, meaning the difference was unlikely to be a chance finding in this sample.
Respondents wanted practical learning
Respondents strongly wanted more onco-cardiology education. Web-based seminars and e-learning were the most frequently selected ways to receive it. The survey thus paired strong interest with limited reported experience and relatively few reported institutional initiatives.
A snapshot with clear limits
The findings come from a cross-sectional survey carried out from July 23 to August 23, 2025. Eligible participants were pharmacists aged 45 or younger who received an invitation, gave informed consent and completed the questionnaire. The 105 respondents answered a Google Forms questionnaire with 23 items: 20 multiple-choice questions and three free-text questions grouped into six domains. Researchers summarized categorical answers as counts and percentages, treated five-point responses as distribution percentages and compared collaboration domains with a Friedman test, using a two-sided P value below 0.05 as the threshold for statistical significance.
There are important limits to how far the findings can be generalized. The survey's recipient denominator was unknown, so the researchers could not calculate a response rate or fully judge how representative the respondents were. The data were self-reported, the questionnaire was not formally validated and the cross-sectional design limits both measurement validity and causal inference.
The study also carries a disclosed organizational caveat. It was conceived and conducted entirely by authors who held leadership or membership roles in JOCS-NEXT or JOCS, which represented a potential organizational conflict of interest. No financial support came from JOCS-NEXT or JOCS. The deidentified participant data will not be shared.
Taken together, the findings describe strong interest alongside limited reported experience and weaker hospital-community collaboration. The survey points to education and cross-setting coordination as priorities for further study, but its cross-sectional, self-reported design does not establish causation.
Paper data and sources
Original title: Gaps in Onco-Cardiology Practice and Educational Needs for the Next Generation of Pharmacists in Japan
Authors: Morita K, Shibutani Y, Masuda S et al.
Journal/Repository: Circulation reports
Status: Peer-reviewed
First online: 2026-10-10
DOI: Not available
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