Knowledge, attitude and practice of patient medication counseling among drug dispensers in North West Ethiopia.

Patient medication counseling on dispensing of medicines should give the patient clear and complete instructions on how to take or use drugs. The way drugs are taken by the patient is often influenced by the way drugs are dispensed and the type of information given during dispensing. The objective of this study was to assess drug dispensers’ knowledge, attitude and practice of patient medication counseling in drug retail outlets of Gondar and Bahir Dar towns. A cross-sectional study was conducted on patient medication counseling by using a self-administered semi-structured questioner. The questionnaire was distributed to dispensers to fill in their home or at their free time and collected in the next day. Data were analyzed using SPSS for windows version 16.0. Forty (62.5%) of the dispensers believe that patient counseling is a shared responsibility of pharmacy professionals and physicians. Only 29.7% of the dispensers always update their knowledge on drugs and their most frequent source of drug information on drugs were leaflets. Forty nine (76.6%) of dispensers respond as they know the formal way and the information included in patient counseling. Lack of adequate knowledge on drugs and up-to-date drug information was major factor that prevent dispensers from counseling patients. Most of the dispensers are not accessible to up-to-date drug informations. The dispensers give less counseling. Lack of knowledge and update drug information was the major barrier of patient medication counseling dispensers faced. Formal education should include patient counseling and continuous training should be given to increase dispensers’ knowledge on patient counseling. Up to date and relevant drug information sources should be given to dispensers.

Assessment of patterns of drug use by using World Health Organization's prescribing, patient care and health facility indicators in selected health facilities in Southwest Ethiopia.

The objective of the study was to assessing patterns of drug use by using World Health Organization prescribing, patient care and health facility indicators in Southwest Ethiopia. A cross sectional study was carried out in four randomly selected health facilities. Retrospectively the prescription papers analyzed according to WHO guideline. Prospectively 35 patients from each of the four health facilities were interviewed at the outpatient pharmacy while drugs were dispensed to assess the patient care indicators. The average number of drugs per prescription ranging from 1.98 to 2.24. The mean consultation time spent between the prescriber and patient were range from 5.47 to 6.50. The mean pharmacy dispensing time was 1.23 minutes to 1.25minutes. The average number of drugs prescribed was in the range of 1.80 to 2.88. Two of the health facilities had a copy of Ethiopian essential drug list (EDL), 2(50%) had a copy of standard treatment guideline for health centers and only 1 (25%) of the health facility had a copy of drug formulary. The pattern of prescription in terms of generic name and polypharmacy was near to optimal. The pattern of antibiotics and injection prescribing appears appropriate when compared with the world health organization guideline. However, there is a need to improve patients’ knowledge on dispensed drugs.