Pharmacist perception to importance and self-competence in pharmacy practice.

TLDR: Hospital pharmacy respondents showed higher perceptions of the importance and competence to the most of the current pharmacy practice activities compared to their counterparts in community pharmacy settings, and less than 50% of community pharmacy respondents indicated that they were competent to practice the dispensing activities and agreed about its importance.

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: study objective is to evaluate the pharmacists’ perception towards the importance of pharmaceutical care in respective practice site and also self-evaluation to determine the competence in managing clinical practices. METHODOLOGY: A questionnaire was designed to explore the pharmacist’s understanding, knowledge, and their perceptions on the philosophy of pharmaceutical care and barriers to its provision, and also the current pharmacy practice. The cross-sectional study was conducted, which involved exploring and collecting data from community and hospital pharmacists in the West and East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak), employing the selfadministered mailed questionnaire approach. Pharmacists recruited by systematic random sampling technique. The data was analyzed using the SPSS® (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software program for windows® Version (12.0), and Microsoft Office Excel 2003. RESULTS: Of the 927 questionnaires mailed to the hospital and community pharmacists, 269 were returned back. In terms of the responses from both the hospital and community pharmacists; provide a response rate of 45.8% and 18.5%, respectively. The medians age of the hospital and community pharmacy respondents were found to be 29 and 36 years old, respectively (mean 31.8 ± 7.03 and 36.8 ± 8.78 respectively). It was observed that most of the respondents from the both the hospital and community pharmacy settings tend to be in the younger age group (24-35 years) (77%) and (48.2%) respectively, (P< 0.001, Chi-square). 2-Proportions Sample test showed highly a significant value of p < 0.05 for these variables when tested to estimate the differences in proportions (EDP). The overall of the community pharmacy respondents for this category of activities were (81%) and this was significantly higher (p < 0.05; Chi-Square, 2-sided) than these stated by the hospital pharmacy respondents (60%). CONCLUSION: Hospital pharmacy respondents showed higher perceptions of the importance and competence to the most of the current pharmacy practice activities compared to their counterparts in community pharmacy settings. Whereas less than 50% of community pharmacy respondents indicated that they were competent to practice the dispensing activities and agreed about its importance .