Community pharmacists’ attitude towards professional practice - a comparative study among two different geographical zones in Malaysia

Abstract

Objective: To compare the differences of the community pharmacists' attitude towards their professional practice among different zones (regions).Method: This was a comparative study of cross-sectional study of two different regions, using a pre-validated self-administered questionnaire containing three constructs and 37 items. Each question/statement assessed respondents attitude towards professional practice using five point Likert scale from for very low (1) to very high (5). Descriptive statistics was done using frequency, percentage, median and IQR whereas, for inferential statistics, Mann-Whitney test was used for comparing two different set of data's.Results: Among the 300 respondents, the response rate was 85% and 87% for the two study zones. The attitude score was estimated for the three domains testing the professional practice of the respondents, and the total attitude score was arrived by summing up the three domain scores. The respondents of zone 1 showed 51%, positive attitude score, 45%, neutral attitude score and 4%, negative attitude score. On the other hand, correspondents from zone 2 showed 56%, positive attitude score, 38%, neutral attitude score and 6%, negative attitude score. It was also found that there are no significant relationship between the attitude scores and demographic variables. However, the Mann Whitney test showed a significant correlations among the total attitude score and the attitude score of the three professional practice domains with TIPM followed by TPCA and TMDA with r (300)=0.880, p<0.001, r (300)=0.864, p<.001 and r (300)=.811, p<.001 respectively. Conclusion:Majority of the respondents showed a mixed attitude score for the three constructs. Continuing education and training programs on professional practice can be an important approach in equipping community pharmacists with the knowledge, skills and behavior change needed to expand their scope of practice in providing public with better quality of therapy and also improving public health outcomes.

Attitude towards professional practice among community pharmacists’ in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“…Having a positive attitude towards pharmaceutical care and public health activities may not end up with competency in the pharmacy profession unless pharmacists are life-long learners with a passion to be updated in their daily practice. The positive attitude of the participants of the current study towards the maintenance of competence activities is in line with other reports from Malaysia, Canada, and Lebanon (7,12,28,29) . The response of our participants to the questions about continuous professional development programmes and self-assessment activities fall in the category of very high importance.…”

“…The questionnaire, which is adapted from previous studies (7,12,18) was initially evaluated by face and content validity tests and reliability test with a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.93. The internal consistency was assessed in a pilot test of 15 participants, that were excluded from final analysis.…”