Understandings, Attitudes, and Barriers About Diabetes Care: Analysis of Factors Influencing Community Pharmacists in China

Abstract

Purpose Diabetes mellitus (DM) has been known as a major chronic health problem in China. Suboptimal management of diabetic patients may incur serious complications, even death. The quality of post-hospital care has a good relationship with community pharmacists. However, data describing the current situation from care between community pharmacists and patients in China are lacking. Our article is to investigate community pharmacists’ activities, evaluate their attitudes towards providing diabetes care, assess their understandings, and identify perceived barriers. Methods A survey divided into four parts was carried out randomly in China. The part of basic characteristics, understandings, and pharmacists’ perceived barriers was rated with a few listed choices scales, while the Likert scale was used to identify on the part of attitudes. Quantitative data were shown in frequency and valid percent. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and non-parametric test conducted on data. A P-value ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results A total of 737 surveys were collected. The respondent pharmacists maintained a simply moderate understanding of diabetes care and the pharmaceutical services provided met basic needs rather than clinical ones, though they showed a good momentum towards providing better service. The respondent pharmacists considered patients lacking knowledge on self-management, shortage of funds as the main barriers. Conclusion Efforts are supposed to make to expand pharmacists’ scope of practice, lessen patients’ reluctance, and create platforms for pharmacists receiving further education.

Actual practices of community pharmacists in the management of diabetes: a comparison of simulated patient-based study with perceived role of involvement

“…Most CPPs only provided basic traditional dispensing services like receipt of prescriptions, interpretation or evaluation of the prescriptions, and supply of the prescribed medication. The finding is consistent with earlier findings (Laliberté et al, 2012 ; Arif et al, 2023 ; Wang et al, 2021 ) that reported fewer participants actually involved in providing such activities. This may result from their limited knowledge and skills, which can result in their lower actual involvement in such healthcare services.…”

Barriers and facilitators to primary care management of type 2 diabetes in Shijiazhuang City, China: a mixed methods study

“…Although education levels are improving, the issue of an ageing population will remain a major challenge to the public health system in China [ 17 ]. A lack of knowledge about diabetes self-management has been reported as a major barrier in previous studies [ 18 – 20 ]. In our study, we found that patients’ knowledge about diabetes management was often missing (e.g., low awareness of diabetes complications), mistaken (e.g., intermitted medication use driven by the presence of symptoms), and easily misled (e.g., belief in health advice from quack doctors and false information in television advertisements).…”

Type 2 Diabetes Patients’ Views of Local Pharmacists and Fulfilment with Pharmaceutical Diabetes Care in Syria’s Latakia Governorate: An Online Survey Research

“…A comprehensive literature search was conducted before creating a self-administered questionnaire [ 21 , 23 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ].…”