SELF-MEDICATION AND ROLE OF PHARMACIST IN PATIENT EDUCATION

Abstract

Introduction: Pharmacy is the art, science and practice of preparing, preserving, compounding and dispensing of drugs and it also includes modern services related to health care including clinical services, reviewing medications for safety and efficacy, and providing drug information. The pharmacy services provided in India seem to be mainly product-sale focused and traditionally practiced with very minimum or negligible focus on the trending or modern clinical services such as patient education on prescribed medication and also over the counter medications which may be taken by the patient. Therefore, strategies are to be implemented and health system reforms need to be introduced to follow the trending clinical services in order to improve the quality of pharmacy services with the main aim of optimizing the patient care.

Objective: Assess self-medication and role of pharmacist in patient education in the Department of Pharmacy, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Medical College and Hospital, Bengaluru.

Methodology: This was a Hospital based observational study, in which data collection was carried out over a period of 6 months from the outpatient pharmacy. Data was collected after obtaining consent from the patients. A self-designed questionnaire for assessing knowledge on self-medication and patient satisfaction were used for data collection. Then follow-up was made to assess improvement in medication adherence. The data collected was then analyzed using suitable statistical methods.

Result: A total of 250 patients were enrolled from the patients visiting out-patient pharmacy. Out of which, 60.8% were females and 39.2% were males. Among both genders females (60.80%) showed more interest in participating in our study. The mean age of the study subjects was found to be 37.86±17.99 years. In our study which involved 250 patients, 42% (n=105) were found to be on self-medication. Out of 42%, 17.20% (n=43) were males and 24.80% (n=62) were females. The age group ranging between 40-59years, 34.29% (n=36) were on high in number compared other age groups out of which 22.85% (n=24) were females and 11.44% (n=12) were males. Overall satisfaction was calculated using Likert scale, and the overall mean patient satisfaction score was found to be

4.56±0.55 (a score of 5 indicated most satisfied and 1 indicated least satisfied).

Conclusion: The project aims to demonstrate the role of pharmacists in improving the patient health care and motivating the pharmacists not to limit the pharmacy profession to just dispensing. It is quite necessary to impart this knowledge to every pharmacy in India where it is practiced traditionally with only dispensing as their main role and not extending further to better services like self-medication assessment and Improve medication adherence.

Keywords: Hospital, pharmacy, hospital ambulatory, pharmacist, adherence, patient, satisfaction, medication, self medication.