Background: Pharmaceutical care (PC) has a significant impact on optimizing pharmacotherapy and improving patients’ quality of life. We aimed to determine the attitudes and perceived barriers of final year pharmacy undergraduates towards provision of PC services in Nepal. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 232 students using a 13-item-standard PC attitude survey (PCAS) questionnaire and 12-itemed PC barrier questionnaires. Mann–Whitney U test and Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to measure the median difference between groups, at alpha=0.05, and Spearman’s rho test was used to measure the strength of the correlation. Results: Majority of students were self-motivated in undertaking the current pharmacy education (178, 76.7%) and had no previous incomplete grades that could delay their graduation (177, 76.3%). Over 80% of students had a positive attitude toward all items of PCAS (agreed and strongly agreed) except for two items. Whereas, 61 (26.3%) disagreed and strongly disagreed that providing PC takes too much time and effort. The major barriers perceived were inadequate PC training (176, 75.9%), inadequate drug information resources in the pharmacy (170, 73.3%), and lack of access to patient medical records in the pharmacy (165, 71.1%). A significant relationship was noticed between positive attitude towards PC and three factors; source of motivation, current employment in pharmacy job, and incomplete grades delaying graduation. Age factor was significant but negatively correlated with the scores of positive attitudes namely “I would like to perform PC as a pharmacist practitioner”, “Providing PC is professionally rewarding” and “I feel that the PC is the right direction for the provision to be headed”. Conclusion: Nepalese undergraduate pharmacy students had positive attitudes toward PC. Exercising proper pharmacy practice regulations and educational efforts to overcome the perceived barriers may lead to better delivery of PC.

BackgroundPharmacists are the most reachable healthcare professionals to many chronically ill patients. It has been found that pharmacists see patients with diabetes up to five times more often than any other healthcare provider. Therefore, to provide quality health care to patients it is important that they have appropriate knowledge and practice on diabetes mellitus management. Thus, this study was conducted to assess the knowledge and practice of diabetes mellitus management among community pharmacy personnel involved in retail community pharmacies of Kathmandu.MethodsThree hundred and fifteen community pharmacies, selected by systematic random sampling were surveyed by using pre-validated self-administered questionnaires. The first set of questionnaire evaluated the community pharmacy personnel’s diabetes knowledge based on a pre-validated 20-item questionnaire. The second set of questionnaire documented about the practice of community pharmacy personnel on diabetes mellitus management which contained 22 questions. Data was entered in EPI Data and analyzed by using SPSS version 20.ResultsThis survey demonstrated that 76.5 % respondents had poor knowledge and 86.4 % had negative practice on diabetes mellitus (DM) management. Only 26.2 % respondents had good knowledge as well as good practice. 31.4 % of respondents had poor knowledge as well as poor practice on DM management.ConclusionsLaws and regulations regarding community pharmacy personnel need to be implemented. There should be more advanced and experiment based training. Additionally, the provision for further education curriculum in pharmacy education should be implemented which should intensively include disease and proper management. Guidelines covering diabetes care should be distributed and implemented throughout community pharmacies.

Background: Low back pain is one of the common musculoskeletal health problems that occur most commonly in nurses among all Health workers. Different researches showed that nurses are suffering from low back pain due to many factors. This research was conducted to find the prevalence and contributing factors of low back pain among nurses. Method: The descriptive cross-sectional study was done among 110 nurses by using stratified proportionate random sampling method. Semi structured self-administered questionnaire with single and multiple responses was administered among nurses after taking informed consent. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 20 was used for analysis of data. Descriptive statistic (percentage and frequency) and inferential statistic (chi square) was used for the study. Result: Among 110 nurses, 64.5% were affected from low back pain and prevalence of low back pain of one year and one week was 60% and 20% respectively. The present working area was strongly associated with low back pain (p=0.000). Prolong standing (64.54%), bending and twisting (64.54%), heavy workload (62.72%), working in same positions (58.18%) were perceived factors of low back pain but heavy mental workload had no relationship with low back pain. Taking rest (99.1%), physiotherapy (92.7%) and taking medication (82.7%) were the factors that decreased low back pain. There was increased work restriction (46.4) and less productive and creative (42.7) due to low back pain. Conclusion: More than half of nurses were affected from low back pain. Prolonged standing, physical workload, bending and twisting were main contributing factors. Therefore, it is recommended to maintain proper body mechanics, periodic screening and timely rotation of nurses for the prevention of low back pain.

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