Assessment of pharmaceutical care practices of community pharmacists in patients with co-morbidity of hypertension and diabetes in Delta state.

Abstract

We undertook to assess the pharmaceutical care practices of community pharmacists in patients with co-morbidity of hypertension and diabetes in Delta State. A seventeen item questionnaire consisting of 5 points response scale was developed and administered to pharmacists in the community setting. The questionnaire covered questions to assess pharmacists’ socio- demographic characteristics such as age, sex, status, years of post qualification, level of involvement in certain pharmaceutical care activities, certain aspect of patient education and most frequently encountered drug therapy problem. Completed questionnaires were subjected to descriptive analysis. The relationship between socio-demographic profile and response was explored using chi-square and student t-test. P-values less than 0.05 were interpreted as statistically significant. The percentage of the respondents that claimed full practice of pharmaceutical care while having a good understanding of its concept was 98.70. This claim was not matched by their involvement in certain other pharmaceutical care activities such as identification of drug therapy problems, monitoring of response, taking of medication history, initiation of therapy and taking of family history. Of the respondents, 64.64% were involved in patient education and 44.16% in referral of patients completely. The most encountered drug therapy problem was non- compliance. The low level of pharmacists’ involvement in pharmaceutical care activities was due to time constraint, low patient acceptance of recommendation and lack of patient medical record. The low level of the pharmacists’ involvement in certain pharmaceutical care activities calls for urgent need for pharmacists to improve their pharmaceutical care so as to promote patients’ health outcome.

Keywords: Diabetes, Hypertension, Pharmaceutical Care, Co-morbidity, Community Pharmacists.