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Background The Pharmacy Research Priorities in Malaysia (PRPM) was published by the Pharmaceutical Services Programme (PSP), Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOH) in 2018. This study was aimed to explore the perceptions of MOH pharmacists in utilising this document while conducting their respective research.Methods Two online focus group discussion (FGD) sessions were conducted among pharmacists who represented various disciplines in MOH and with different level of research experience. Thematic analysis was performed on the verbatim transcriptions of the FGDs and relevant themes and sub-themes were derived.Results Five thematic categories emerged, which were (1) awareness of the MOH pharmacists towards the document; (2) perception and perceived functions of the PRPM document; (3) utilisation practice and motivation to refer to the document; (4) barriers in utilising the document; and (5) recommendations to improve the uptake of the PRPM document. Overall, the document was perceived to be useful among MOH pharmacists to guide them while conducting their research activities but their utilisation practice was low. The document was used as categorisation tool instead and most of the pharmacists did not refer to the PRPM document when planning their research. There were several barriers including exhaustive length of the document as well as partial understanding of its function and how to make use of it by the MOH pharmacists. Minimal promotional activities for the document had been identified as potential contributing factor to the low utilisation of the document.Conclusions Overall, the PRPM document was perceived to be beneficial but the response received from the FGDs showed low uptake of the PRPM document among the pharmacists when planning research activities. Further study should be conducted to further assess the uptake of this document by pharmacy researchers as a whole and various initiatives need to be taken to improve the PRPM utilisation.

Background: Pharmacy value-added services (PVAS) have long been offered in public health institutions across Malaysia as an alternative to conventional counter services for prescription refills, with the aim to reduce the waiting time. Objective: To assess the utilization of the PVAS in individual health institutions, and its association with the achievement of the key performance indicator (KPI) set for the pharmacy waiting time. Method: This was a cross-sectional study based on the data contributed by 142 hospitals and 648 health clinics throughout 2018. The availability and uptake of the PVAS were summarized as percentages. The impacts of the PVAS uptake and the other institution-related factors on the KPI achievement were further explored using the logistic regression analysis.     Results: Approximately 2.9 million (17.1%) of the refill prescriptions were dispensed via the PVAS. The appointment-and-pickup services (42.7%) and the Integrated Drug Dispensing System (23.7%) emerged as the most commonly used types of PVAS. A higher PVAS uptake was associated with a better KPI achievement (OR=0.91, 95% CI: 0.84-0.98). In contrast, adding a new type of PVAS to the existing services yielded an opposite outcome (OR=1.48, 95% CI: 1.15-1.89). Both the prescription load and location of health institutions were also found have influenced the KPI achievement.  Conclusion: The PVAS are generally well accepted in Malaysia and showed to have reduced the pharmacy waiting time. However, strategies to optimize the PVAS uptake are warranted.

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