Sudanese community pharmacy practice and its readiness for change to patient care

Abstract

Objectives This study aims to describe the current state of Sudanese community pharmacy practice and explore the capacity of existing community pharmacies to foster the change to pharmaceutical care (PC) and to assess attitude and knowledge of community pharmacists regarding PC and identify barriers. Methods A structured, self‐administered, piloted questionnaire was distributed to the pharmacists in charge of 274, randomly selected, community pharmacies in Khartoum state. The questionnaire included six domains: demographic characteristics, organizational structure of community pharmacies, current activities of community pharmacists, their attitudes and knowledge regarding PC, and potential barriers. Attitude responses were measured by a 5‐point Likert scale. Key findings Response rate was 67%. Community pharmacies are short on some tools that are deemed necessary for PC implementation, e.g. consultation areas. Community pharmacists provide mainly product‐focused services with no or little PC activities. However, there is a highly positive attitude among the majority of respondents towards practice change to include PC (mean positive score ± standard deviation = 4.39 ± 0.73, frequency (%) = 89%). Many barriers to implementation of PC were identified, e.g. pharmacists' clinical knowledge and lack of understanding of pharmacist's new role. Conclusion Sudanese community pharmacists favour practice change to include PC. Successful implementation of PC requires substantial organizational and structural changes in community pharmacies, including provision of clinical knowledge, strengthening of clinical training and new practice standards. This change in practice could benefit from involvement of academia, governmental bodies and professional organizations working together for the pharmacy profession.

Pharmacists' Perceptions of the Barriers and Facilitators to the Implementation of Clinical Pharmacy Key Performance Indicators

“…Pharmacists did not feel that they were implementing new clinical activities into their practice; rather, they felt that they were implementing the process of documenting and monitoring these activities. This finding may explain why pharmacists did not identify lack of knowledge or training as barriers to cpKPI implementation, when these barriers are commonly cited in other studies of pharmacy practice change [ 27 , 28 ].…”

“…In spite of extensive discussion of the challenges associated with documentation, as well as the barriers of increased workload, practice environment constraints, and competing priorities, 22/26 participants believed that pharmacists at NSHA support the implementation of cpKPIs to either a moderate or great extent. We favour the idea that this impressive pharmacist support for the implementation of cpKPIs will facilitate the cpKPI initiative given that pharmacist attitudes, perceptions and beliefs have been identified as facilitators to pharmacy practice change in other settings [ 27 , 29 – 32 ].…”

The Extent of Antibiotic Dispensing in Self-Medication Encounters in Sudan: A Simulated Patient Study Focusing on Cefixime Sale

“… 52 This reflect the importance of pharmacy education. In Sudan, pharmacy education places a greater emphasis on product with solid foundation in pharmaceutical sciences and less on clinical issues, 53 and one study has already mentioned that all pharmacy schools in Sudan need to update their curricula to incorporate patient-centered teaching and training. 54 …”

“…52 This reflect the importance of pharmacy education. In Sudan, pharmacy education places a greater emphasis on product with solid foundation in pharmaceutical sciences and less on clinical issues, 53 and one study has already mentioned that all pharmacy schools in Sudan need to update their curricula to incorporate patient-centered teaching and training. 54 Law enforcement, public awareness campaigns, and effective supervision and training of healthcare members were found to be contributors in reducing self-medication with antibiotics in high income European countries.…”

Sparfloxacin charge transfer complexes with 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-1,4-benzoquinone and tetracyanoquinodimethane: Molecular structures, spectral, and DFT studies

“…Moreover, electronic structures were investigated by TD-DFT method and the descriptions of frontier molecular orbitals and the relocation of the electron density were determined. While this work was in progress, paper describing the quantitative determination of some fluoroquinolone drugs was published by Mohamed et al [19] . Only the experimental requirements for CT reactions in solution was studied.…”