community pharmacists

Background: Pharmaceutical care is increasingly vital in community pharmacies, where
pharmacists play a key role in patient care. Healthcare reforms and legislative initiatives have driven the shift towards patient-centered care in community pharmacy. Evaluating current practices is crucial for enhancing patient outcomes and continuous assessment ensures alignment with evolving patient needs and standards. Objectives: To assess the current pharmaceutical care practices by community pharmacists and evaluate the extent of patient education practices conducted by study participants in their establishments. Methods: In a cross-sectional observational design to evaluate pharmaceutical care practices among community pharmacists in Benin City, a simple random sampling was employed to select 239 participants. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire and analyzed descriptively using Microsoft Excel 2016. Results: As much as 93.7% of community pharmacists in Benin City reported having a counseling section in their pharmacies. 95.0% actively involved patients in medication management. However, only 45.6% had access to electronic health records, and just 20.9% conducted medication reviews regularly. Concerningly, less than half (49.4%) felt very confident about their knowledge of pharmaceutical care principles. Despite these challenges, over 85% educated patients on the importance of adherence to drug therapy, showcasing their commitment to improving patient outcomes. However, only 54% always provided medication counseling, indicating potential gaps in patient education. Furthermore, while 91.2% felt adequately trained to identify and resolve medication-related problems, only 63.6% considered patients' preferences when providing pharmaceutical care.

BACKGROUND: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are unintended, harmful responses to medications at normal therapeutic doses causing significant morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs. Effective pharmacovigilance (PV) is essential for detecting, assessing and preventing ADR. Reporting of ADRs by healthcare professionals is vital for the success of pharmacovigilance. Community Pharmacists play a key role in ADR reporting but underreporting remains a serious issue. This study focuses on assessing theknowledge, attitude and practice of ADR reporting among community pharmacists in Benin City. OBJECTIVES: This study was carried out to assess the knowledge, attitudes and practice of community pharmacists in adverse drug reactions reporting. METHODS: After obtaining ethical approval from the Faculty of Pharmacy Ethics Committee, a cross sectional study was employed. The study employed the use of a structured questionnaire as the major instrument of data collection. The questionnaire was carefully developed to address the objectives of the study and distributed to licensed community pharmacists. The data obtained was analyzed using the software, SPSS version 29. RESULTS: From the study conducted, a total of 184 community pharmacists participated, of which 65.4% were males while 34.6% were females. The result showed an encouraging awareness levels ofcommunity pharmacists to pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) reporting practices. Almost all respondents (98.9%) acknowledged that ADRs should be reported by community pharmacists and recognized the importance of such reporting for patient safety. Poor knowledge about drug-induced diseases was evident in only 11% of participants while 52% demonstrated good knowledge. Attitudes were primarily positive (78%) and practices vi were categorized as good for 7%, fair for 27% and poor for 66% of pharmacists. The top five reported barriers to ADR reporting were unavailability of ADR forms (27%), uncertainty about causality (13.7%), lack of time/workload (12.3%), no rewards for reporting (9.7%), and complexity of the reporting form (8.7%). CONCLUSION: The findings of this study revealed that community pharmacists in Benin City had an encouraging awareness level to pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting practices, a good knowledge of drug-induced diseases, and demonstrated a positive attitude towards ADR reporting but consistent ADR reporting was still below expectations. Thus, there is poor reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) by community pharmacists in Benin City