Physician perceptions of pharmacist roles in a primary care setting in Qatar

Abstract

PurposePharmacists are uniquely trained to provide guidance to patients in the selection of appropriate non-prescription therapy. Physicians in Qatar may not always recognize how pharmacists function in assuring safe medication use. Both these health professional groups come from heterogeneous training and experiences before migrating to the country and these backgrounds could influence collaborative patient care. Qatar Petroleum (QP), the largest private employer in the country, has developed a pharmacist-guided medication consulting service at their primary care clinics, but physician comfort with pharmacists recommending drug therapy is currently unknown. The objective of this study is to characterize physician perceptions of pharmacists and their roles in a primary care patient setting in Qatar.MethodsThis cross-sectional survey was developed following a comprehensive literature review and administered in English and Arabic. Consenting QP physicians were asked questions to assess experiences, comfort and expectations of pharmacist roles and abilities to provide medication-related advice and recommend and monitor therapies.ResultsThe median age of the 62 (77.5%) physicians who responded was between 40 and 50 years old and almost two-third were men (64.5%). Fourteen different nationalities were represented. Physicians were more comfortable with pharmacist activities closely linked to drug products than responsibilities associated with monitoring and optimization of patient outcomes. Medication education (96.6%) and drug knowledge (90%) were practically unanimously recognized as abilities expected of pharmacists, but consultative roles, such as assisting in drug regimen design were less acknowledged. They proposed pharmacist spend more time with physicians attending joint meetings or education events to help advance acceptance of pharmacists in patient-centered care at this site.ConclusionsPhysicians had low comfort and expectations of patient-oriented pharmacist roles but were not threatened to learn more about these capabilities or explore enhanced collaboration in patient care.

The role of clinical pharmacists as perceived by Egyptian physicians

“…However, only one physician admitted this fact. This finding supports a number of previous studies, which showed that physicians are reluctant to accept pharmacist roles, which include any aspects of prescribing …”

“…This finding supports a number of previous studies, which showed that physicians are reluctant to accept pharmacist roles, which include any aspects of prescribing. [24,[26][27][28] The perception of the Egyptian physicians about specific clinical pharmacist roles showed mixed responses. The physicians showed very favourable acceptance towards pharmacists reporting adverse drug reactions, dose adjusting, increasing their role in advising physicians about costeffective prescribing and medication selection according to effectiveness and safety.…”

Role of pharmacist in cardiovascular disease‐related health promotion and in hypertension and dyslipidemia management: a cross‐sectional study in the State of Qatar

“…This can be explained by many factors including the resistance of Qatar's doctors to work with pharmacists in an advanced role, to the pharmacists' reluctance to adopt this role due to their lack of CVD training In fact, 75.5% of respondents in our study indicated that they did not complete any cardiovascular disease‐related training. In addition, in a cross‐sectional survey of doctors in a primary care clinic in Qatar that was conducted to assess the doctors' expectations of a pharmacist's roles and abilities, patient education was recognized by more than 90% of doctors as a pharmacist role but consultative roles, such as assisting in drug regimen design or change were less acknowledged [46]. Another factor that could have contributed to this finding is the current model for health care delivery in the community sector in Qatar in which the different health care providers are not adequately integrated.…”

An explanatory model of community pharmacists' support in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease

“…34,35,37 In fact, pharmacists have frequently reported patients' and GPs' negative attitudes toward, poor knowledge of, and low expectations of their service provision as significant barriers. 20,[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] Furthermore, unfavorable attitudes have adversely affected the pharmacist-GP collaborative practice, 20,29,41,[48][49][50][51][52] a key to providing clinical pharmacy services. 4 Many researchers have concluded that the TPB is a useful theoretical framework to predict levels of clinical pharmacy services.…”