Qualification, knowledge and experience of dispensers working at
community pharmacies in Pakistan

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Abstract

Pharmacies are managed by a variety of dispensers in terms of qualification, knowledge and experience in Pakistan.

Objective

The study aimed to document the state of knowledge, experience and qualification of dispensers working at community pharmacies in Pakistan.

Methods

A comparative cross sectional study was conducted at a randomly selected sample of 371 pharmacies in the three cities of Pakistan. A structured questionnaire for data collection was developed and finalized by focused group discussions and pilot testing. The data was coded, entered and analyzed by using SPSS Version 16. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests (p≤0.05) were performed to find out differences.

Results

Out of total sample of 371 pharmacies, 31.8 % (118) were in Islamabad, 32.4 % (120) in Peshawar and 35.8 % (133) were in Lahore. Fifty percent of the respondents had correct knowledge of range of room temperature at which medicines should be stored. Only 11.1% (41) of the respondents knew about OTC (over the counter drugs) which can be sold without prescription while 5.9 % (22) of the respondents were aware of POM (prescription only medicines) which can be only sold on a valid prescription. While 87.6% (325), 88.1% (327), 58.7% (318) and 95.7 % (355) of the respondents did not know the meaning of the dispensing abbreviations such as ‘h.s’, ‘q.d’, ‘sos’ and ‘p.r.n’. The respondents did not know correctly the status of Deltacortil® (Prednisolone), Septran® (Sulfamethoxazole) and Fansidar® (Pyrimethamine and Sulfadoxine) either as OTC or POM in 26.7% (99), 64.2% (238), and 44.5 % (165) of the cases, respectively. There was a significant difference (p≤0.05) in knowledge of dispensers regarding storage temperature, prescription terminologies and status of medicines having different level of qualification and experience.

Conclusions

The overall knowledge and training of dispensers working at community pharmacies is inadequate in Pakistan. However, pharmacists had relatively better knowledge regarding storage temperature, prescription terminologies and status of medicines as compared to pharmacy assistants, diploma holders and salesperson.

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Most cited references 25

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The role of pharmacists in developing countries: the current scenario in Pakistan

Saira Azhar, Mohamed Hassali, Mohamed Ibrahim … (2009)

During the past few years, the pharmacy profession has expanded significantly in terms of professional services delivery and now has been recognized as an important profession in the multidisciplinary provision of health care. In contrast to the situation in developed countries, pharmacists in developing countries are still underutilized and their role as health care professionals is not deemed important by either the community or other health care providers. The aim of this paper is to highlight the role of pharmacists in developing countries, particularly in Pakistan. The paper draws on the literature related to the socioeconomic and health status of Pakistan's population, along with background on the pharmacy profession in the country in the context of the current directions of health care. The paper highlights the current scenario and portrays the pharmacy profession in Pakistan. It concludes that although the pharmacy profession in Pakistan is continuously evolving, the health care system of Pakistan has yet to recognize the pharmacist's role. This lack of recognition is due to the limited interaction of pharmacists with the public. Pharmacists in Pakistan are concerned about their present professional role in the health care system. The main problem they are facing is the shortage of pharmacists in pharmacies. Moreover, their services are focused towards management more than towards customers. For these reasons, the pharmacist's role as a health care professional is not familiar to the public.

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Pharmacies, self-medication and pharmaceutical marketing in Bombay, India.

M Nichter, V. Kamat (1998)

Studies of pharmaceutical practice have called attention to the role played by pharmacists and pharmacy attendants in fostering self-medication and medicine experimentation among the public. Left undocumented is the extent to which clients passively follow the advice of pharmacy personnel or question their motive or expertise. While research has focused on pharmacists and pharmacy attendants as agents encouraging self-medication and medicine experimentation, adequate attention has not been paid to pharmacist-client interactions that are sensitive to the social, cultural, and economic context in which medicine sales and advice occur. This paper highlights the context in which pharmacy attendants engage in "prescribing medicines" to the public in Bombay, India. An ethnographic description of pharmacies and pharmaceutical-related behavior in Bombay is provided to demonstrate how reciprocal relationships between pharmacy owners, medicine wholesalers and pharmaceutical sales representatives (medreps) influence the actions of pharmacy staff. Attention is focused on the role of the medicine marketing and distribution system in fostering prescription practice, pharmacy "counter-pushing" and self-medication. In documenting the profit motives of different players located on the drug sales continuum, it is argued that the economic rationale and the symbiotic relations that exist between doctors, medreps, medicine wholesalers and retailers, need to be more closely scrutinized by those advocating "rational drug use".

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Real world pharmacy: assessing the quality of private pharmacy practice in the Lao People's Democratic Republic.

B. Stenson, L Syhakhang, B Eriksson … (2001)

The private sector is a dominant actor in the provision of pharmaceuticals, particularly in developing countries. Private provision of drugs has been associated with risks regarding availability, affordability, rational use and drug quality. Ensuring an effective regulatory framework is therefore a major challenge for governments, yet the capacity of regulatory authorities is often outstripped by private sector growth. In the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao P.D.R.), a poor, landlocked country in South East Asia, the private provision of drugs has increased dramatically since the liberalisation of the economy in the late 1980s. This paper aims to describe the quality of the private pharmacy services in the Savannakhet province of Lao P.D.R. In order to do this, a monitoring instrument which serves to make the concept of Good Pharmacy Practice (GPP) operational was developed and applied to a sample of pharmacies. Service quality, as measured by three facility-specific indicators, showed a tendency to be lower in the most distant districts. Poor dispensing practices were manifest by a lack of information about drugs sold in 59% of cases, drugs not being labelled in 47% and different drugs being mixed in the same package in 26% of cases. The prices of four sample drugs were slightly higher in the remote districts. A 10-fold price difference for the same drug was recorded in one district. After reporting the findings, the paper discusses the possible influence of district and pharmacy variables on the quality of services, and goes on to discuss the price differences. It is concluded that further government interventions are needed in order to improve the quality of services and to focus regulatory action on a limited number of aspects, to ensure that drugs can be traced before trying to establish a comprehensive regulatory system.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Azhar Hussain

Mohamed Izham M. Ibrahim

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Pharm Pract (Granada)

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Pharm Pract (Granada)

Journal ID (publisher-id): Pharm Pract

Title: Pharmacy Practice

Publisher: Centro de Investigaciones y Publicaciones Farmaceuticas

ISSN (Print): 1885-642X

ISSN (Electronic): 1886-3655

Publication date (Print): Apr-Jun 2011

Publication date (Electronic): 17 June 2011

Volume: 9

Issue: 2

Pages: 93-100

Affiliations

Discipline of Social and Administrative Pharmacy, University Sains Malaysia . Penang (Malaysia) and Associate Professor. Hamdard Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences Hamdard University , Islamabad (Pakistan).

College of Pharmacy, Al Qassim University . Al Qassim, (Saudi Arabia).

Article

Publisher ID: PhP-378

DOI: 10.4321/S1886-36552011000200006

PMC ID: 3969832

PubMed ID: 24688615

SO-VID: e41458fa-91ab-4b7f-9901-51a28ca76084

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date received : 18 October 2010

Date accepted : 19 May 2011

Funding

The study was partially funded by Research & Development program of Ministry of Health, Government of Pakistan.

Qualification, knowledge and experience of dispensers working at community pharmacies in Pakistan

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Abstract

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Indigenous Knowledge

Most cited references 25

The role of pharmacists in developing countries: the current scenario in Pakistan

Pharmacies, self-medication and pharmaceutical marketing in Bombay, India.

Real world pharmacy: assessing the quality of private pharmacy practice in the Lao People's Democratic Republic.

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