Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices among Pharmacy and Non-Pharmacy Interns in Saudi Arabia Regarding Antibiotic Use and Antibiotic Resistance: A Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study.

This cross-sectional descriptive study aims to explore the knowledge, attitudes, and practices among pharmacy, dentistry, medicine, and nursing interns in Saudi Arabia regarding antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance. Interns received a soft copy of a structured and validated self-administered questionnaire using an online survey platform. A total of 266 interns responded to the questionnaire. On average, the participants achieved good scores in the knowledge and practice domains, followed by the attitude domain. The average knowledge percentage was 76.1% (SD 17.1) compared to 84.6% (SD 20.5) for practices and 61.5% (SD 23.2) for attitudes. The results suggest that pharmacy interns had insignificantly better overall scores compared to non-pharmacy interns for knowledge, attitudes, and practices. This study shows that the scores for knowledge, attitudes, and practices of pharmacy, dentistry, medicine, and nursing interns regarding antibiotic use and resistance were high overall. However, interns' belief in their responsibility in preventing antibiotic resistance is lacking.

Patient Satisfaction of Ambulatory Care Pharmacy Services.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) recently developed the Health Sector Transformation Program (HTSP) to focus on patient satisfaction, safety, and care. This study explored patient satisfaction with outpatient care services. A semi-structured questionnaire was designed to collect the data of patient satisfaction with pharmacy care services through face-to face interviews of participants and over the internet using an electronic format of the same questionnaire (web-based survey). A total of 508 participants responded of whom, 51.8% were male and 83% were below 46 years old. The average scores of domains 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 were 4.51, 4.11, 4.30, 3.70, 3.57, 3.82, 3.63, and 4.15, respectively. The general evaluation of pharmacy services demonstrated that respondents were very satisfied (245; 48.2%), satisfied (143; 28%), and willing to recommend the pharmacy to their families (380; 76.4%). There was no statistically significant difference in the overall satisfaction with pharmacy services among the 2 hospitals (P > .05). Most respondents were satisfied with outpatient care pharmacy services. More efforts are needed to improve the service of following up on patients' adherence by the pharmacists.