ABSTRACT
Background Awareness of pharmacists about counterfeit drugs is necessary for health improvement in community. The purpose of the present study is to assess the knowledge and measure the professional attitude and practice of Iranian pharmacist about counterfeit drugs. In August 2008, a knowledge, attitude and practice [KAP] study was performed in a national s sample of 794 pharmacists who participated in an Iranian Pharmacist Association congress. A questionnaire was prepared to collect Demographic and professional characteristics, Knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacists regarding counterfeit drugs. The mean percent of participants who answer each practice questions correctly is 13.62% and none of questions have more than 14.7% of correct answer, while the participants' attitude towards the subject is at high level. None of demographic factors represented a significant relationship with knowledge and the only related parameters with attitude, were age and gender. Increasing age of pharmacists resulted in attitude improvement [p = 0.013] and womems attitudes were better than men [p = 0.05].The only related parameters with practice, were the number of working hours per a week and attitude. Increasing the number of working hours per a week, resulted in decreasing the desirable practice [p = 0.041] and attitude also had a direct relationship with practice [p = 0.011]. Conclusion The most important finding in the present study was the pharmacists low knowledge and practice level about counterfeit drugs, while their attitude towards this subject was at a high level. The results point out the need for designing and implementing educational programs
ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to clarify the expectations of the health care professionals [professors, residents, interns, nurses and head nurses] in Dr. shariati Hospital regarding the services of the Drug and Poison Information Center in this Hospital. Data was collected from a questionnaire which was distributed among 400 people in April 2009. Only 157 respondents fulfilled the questionnaire. So a return rate of 39% was achieved. According to the results, medical reference books and drug information textbooks [36.7%] and expert colleagues [29.7%] were the [most commonly] used drug information resources. 77.8% of respondents [almost never] use DPICs. According to the results, 77.5% of respondents were non- acquainted with these centers' activities. 44.4% of respondents included [adverse drug reactions] and 33.3% included [availability of drugs in pharmacy] in the blank space considered for them to mention any expectation [s] they rank as the most important. In addition, 74% of them rank [incompatibility of injectable drugs] and [70.1% rank] drug interactions [as the [extremely important] issues. Being non acquaintance with services of DPIC centers can be considered as the most important reason of not using them. Even after 13 years of opening of the first DPIC in IRAN, the health care professionals are not familiar with these centers' services and activities yet. It shows an urgent need for culture building activities to introduce them these centers services