The characteristics of drug information inquiries in an Ethiopian university hospital: A two-year observational study

Abstract

The types of drug-related information request from patients and health professionals, the extent of inquiry and capability of existing drug information centers are seldom studied in Ethiopia. This study aimed to identify the types and potential areas of drug information inquiry at the Drug Information Center (DIC) of Gondar University specialized Hospital (GUSH), Ethiopia. An observational study was employed. The drug information query was collected by distributing the drug information queries in different hospital units through two batches of graduating undergraduate pharmacy students. Descriptive statistics used to describe, characterize and classify drug related queries. Binary logistic regression test was employed to identify predictor variables to type of drug information query. A total of 781 drug related queries were collected and 697 were included in the final analysis. Near to half (45.3%) of queries comes from the pharmacists followed by general practitioners (11.3%) and nurses (10.2%). Slightly greater than half of the queries (51.9%) were focused on therapeutic information. 39.6% of drug related queries related to infectious disease case scenarios, followed by cardiovascular cases in 21.3% of queries. More than half of (53.9%) and nearly one in five (19.4%) of the queries took 5 to 30 minutes and 30 minutes to 1 hour of literature searching to answer, respectively. Pharmacists (with odds ratio of 2.474(95% CI (1.373-4.458)) and patients (with odds ratio of 4.121(1.403–12.105)) ask patient-specific questions in their drug related queries higher than other group of health professionals. Pharmacists are the primary drug information users and frequent drug related information inquirers at the DIC. Most of the queries targeted therapeutic indications, adverse drug events, infectious or cardiovascular disease related requests. This is imperative that drug information services can assist the growing role of pharmacists in addressing the patient specific drug related needs.

Paradigm shift of drug information centers during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Patients with a chronic illness, such as diabetes, CVD, and kidney disease, usually have many questions regarding medications and lifestyle modifications [17]. Such questions may be more frequent during the COVID-19 outbreak, as patients may consider themselves to be at high risk for the infection.…”

Predominant Sources of Pharmacists’ Drug Information, and Identification of Drug Information Needs from Pharmacists in Community and Hospital Settings

“…5 An Ethiopian study reported pharmacists to be the most frequent users of DIS. 2 The difference in finding may be attributed to differences in the study settings.…”

“…1 However, the number of existing drugs is huge and new pharmaceuticals are growing regularly and could be overwhelming for drug users, thus representing a risk for the rational use of drugs. This buttresses the relevance of drug information services in clinical decisions 2 and underscores the need for drug information experts who ensure the safe and effective use of drugs by providing timely, accurate and unbiased information on drugs to users. 3,4 Drug information involves the provision of verbal or written information about drugs to individuals or organizations and this is the responsibility of the pharmacist.…”

A survey on student pharmacists' knowledge, attitude and perceptions about drug and poison information elective rotation in Saudi Arabia

“…The authors found the majority of the respondents familiar with tertiary information resources, and this response was consistent both at the beginning and at the end of the rotation. Tefera et al have reported that over 80% of the answers to queries are done after referring to tertiary information sources (Tefera et al, 2019). Also, a study conducted in Singapore and several other studies has reported the use of tertiary information resources as they are considered succinct and utilised more compared with primary information resources (Ponampalam, Anantharaman, 2003;Wong, Ko, & Sklar, 2009;Almazrou, Ali, & Alzhrani, 2017).…”

“…Hence, when healthcare sector professionals themselves lack awareness, it is not surprising to obtain a similar response from student pharmacists. A study from Singapore revealed that 41% of physicians preferred pharmacists as providers of drug information (Tefera et al, 2019). Moreover, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, several National Drug and Poison Information Centres (NDIC) have been operationalised in several hospitals and over 2,500 primary healthcare centres, (Alomi et al, 2016), creating immense job opportunities in this domain.…”