Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Exploring community pharmacists perception towards responsible provision of patient care services: A quantitative assessment

Zelal Kharaba^1,2, Rozina Kousar³, Saira Azhar⁴, Manal Ali Buabeid⁵, Shujaat ALi Khan⁶, Ghulam Murtaza⁷

¹Department of Clinical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Al Ain University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; ²Honorary Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom; ³Department of Pharmacy, Women Institute of Learning, Abbottabad, Pakistan; ⁴Department of Pharmacy, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan; ⁵Department of Clinical Sciences, Ajman University, Ajman 346; ⁶Department of Pharmacy, COMSATS University Islamabad, Abbottabad Campus; ⁷Department of Pharmacy, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, Pakistan.

For correspondence:- Ghulam Murtaza Email: saira.azhar@uos.edu.pk Tel:+923142082826

Accepted: 25 January 2020 Published: 30 April 2020

Citation: Kharaba Z, Kousar R, Azhar S, Buabeid MA, Khan SA, Murtaza G. Exploring community pharmacists perception towards responsible provision of patient care services: A quantitative assessment. Trop J Pharm Res 2020; 19(4):879-885 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v19i4.29

© 2020 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the perception of community pharmacists with regard to pharmaceutical care services in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Pakistan.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey carried out among the community pharmacists in seven divisions of KPK, namely, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, Malakand, Mardan, and Peshawar. The survey was conducted between July and September 2014. A total of 22 community pharmacists were identified and approached.

Results: Eighteen community pharmacists returned the filled questionnaire showing a response rate of 81.8 %. All participants (n = 18, 100 %) were male. The majority of the participants 55.6 % (n = 10) made it clear that they had never interacted with doctors, while only 33.3 % (n = 6) reported weekly interaction. The major reasons for interaction were to discuss drug alternatives (38.9 %, n = 7) and the availability of prescribed drugs (33.3 %, n = 6). Meanwhile, about 83.3 % (n = 15) of community pharmacists were involved in educating patients, while only 38.9 % (n = 7) spend enough time on each patient. Further, a large proportion of respondents had never documented patients’ medical, allergy and family histories (83.3 %, n = 15). Only 44.4 % (n = 8) of community pharmacists sometimes checked and signed the prescription.

Conclusion: Community pharmacists are few in number in the studied area. They are involved in patient counseling but face difficulties in counseling due to lack of time and insufficient pharmacy staff. Therefore, there is a need to significantly enhance the interaction between pharmacists and other healthcare professionals to facilitate inter-professional collaboration.

Keywords: Community pharmacy, Pharmaceutical care, Perception, Inter-professional collaboration