ABSTRACT
The electrolyte replacement therapy consternation considered one of the high alert drugs. Most of the medication safety organizations have established preventive guidelines for the prescription of electrolyte therapy. The General Administration of Pharmaceutical Care at the Ministry of Health in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also has established guidelines for the preparation and administration of electrolyte replacement for adult patients. This new initiative is regarding the standardized concentration of electrolyte preparation and administration for adult patients. The electrolyte therapy may be prescribed via a physician order form, which may be easily converted as computerized physician order entry. This from is designed to prevent all electrolyte-related errors and improve patient outcomes. This project is a new tool implemented for electrolyte safety at the Ministry of Health hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: To explore the patient satisfaction of ambulatory care services at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods: This is a 4-month cross-sectional survey of patient satisfaction of ambulatory care pharmacy services at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The survey consisted of 48 questions divided into two parts: the first part collects demographic information and the second part contains questions on 11 domains: (1) medication availability, (2) patient counseling, (3) pharmacist and patient relationship, (4) medication reconciliation, (5) medication aberrance, (6) pharmacy location, (7) pharmacy waiting area, (8) pharmacy communications, (9) pharmacy waiting time, (10) pharmacy recommends to others and (11) overall patient satisfaction of pharmacy services. The survey was distributed to the three hospitals in Riyadh city, included public, pediatrics and emergency hospitals ambulatory care patient. The survey was in an electronic format and it analyze the results through the Survey Monkey system. Results: A total of 606 patients responded to the survey. There were 338 (55.8%) female and 268 (44.2%) male responders. Most of them were in age group of 18–44 years (65.3%) without any statistically significant differences in the age groups among the three hospitals (p<0.5). The highest level of education was high school (232 (38.4%)) followed by the Bachelor’s degree (191 (31.6%)) and an intermediate school (117 (19.4%)). Most of the patients visited the ambulatory care pharmacy 3 to 4 times in the past 12 months (239 (41.1%)), whereas the others (105 (18.1%)) visited the ambulatory care pharmacy for the first time. The mean (±standard deviation (SD)) waiting time to get the medications was 18.36±11.32 min and there were statistically significant differences among the three hospitals (p<0.5). The average scores of domains 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 were 3.35, 3.2, 3.7 and 1.96, 1.8, 3.7, 3.25, 2.14, 3.61, 3.54, respectively. With a total of 381 (62.87%) responders, general evaluation of pharmacy services was found to be very good to excellent, whereas 369 (60.9%) responders recommend the pharmacy to their family or friends and 315 (52.5%) responders prefer to revisit pharmacy. Conclusion: More than half of the patients were satisfied with ambulatory care pharmacy services at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Medication reconciliation, medication adherence and pharmacy communication domains were not found to be satisfied. Improving ambulatory care pharmacy services will prevent drug misadventures, avoid additional cost and increase patient satisfaction with pharmacy services.