ABSTRACT
Background :Effective communication between the patient and the pharmacist is an important aspect of pharmacotherapy as it ensures patient’s compliance to their medications.
Objectives : The major objectives of this study is to determine the level of communication between the pharmacist and the patient, and to examine the factors that can effectively predict question asking behaviour by the patient and the provision of medication information by the pharmacist to the patient.
Method: Pharmacy departments of University of Benin teaching hospital and Central Hospital (now state specialist) in benin city, were used for the study. In each of the hospitals, both the pharmacists (50) and the patients (68 males and 82 females ) were observed as the patients were being attended to by the pharmacists within the drug dispensing and counselling area. Information on the prescriptions was obtained from the patients as they came into the pharmacy dispensing areas. The possibility that specific types of information were provided under different conditions of prescription status, patient age, patient gender and patient question asking were investigated. Factors associated with administrative elements, continuity of therapy, contraindications, directions for use, interactions, monitoring, name of medication, purpose of medication, side effects, and solicitation of feedback were determined by an observation of pharmacist-patient encounters and recording whether or not each type of information was provided to patients. The effects of independent variables (socio-demographic characteristics, prescription status, patient age, patient gender and patient question asking) on the provision of information to patients were investigated using logistic regression analysis.
Results: The provision of information on medication to the patients by the pharmacists from the findings of this study in these hospitals was averagely good. The Pharmacists generally provide information to the patients in connection with administrative elements which include majorly the prices of their medications, (51.3%), the directions for their use (94.7%), continuity of therapy (60%), interaction (50%) , name of medication (66.7%), Nature of medication (62%) , purpose of medication , side effects, solicitation for feedbacks, 92.7%, 64%, 56% respectively. They hardly provided information on contraindications, monitoring, source of medication. Also from my findings, a larger percentage of the patients (56.7%) are only interested in the price of their medications
Low number of staff in hospital pharmacies and the teeming population of patients are the limiting factors militating against the provision of appropriate information on drugs to patients in the hospitals studied.
Since patient question-asking is currently such an important determinant of the provision of many types of information, it is imperative to consider education of the public on the need to communicate with pharmacist in addition to organizing an educational intervention programmes for pharmacists, themselves. It is important to point out that:
(1) pharmacists (rather than technicians) should physically hand over medicines to patients and to show that the pharmacist is available to answer questions that the patient might have.
