THE PRACTICE OF COUNSELING IN PHARMACY: PATIENTS’ PERSPECTIVES

Aim: The objective of the study was to assess pharmacists’ counseling practices from the patient perspective using the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Medication Counseling Behavior Guidelines (MCBG) questionnaire. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted over 4 months in the outpatients section of the pharmacy department in two tertiary care hospitals: King Abdulaziz Medical City, Riyadh, and King Fahad Medical City. Participants were randomly selected to complete the USP-MCBG questionnaire, and gave their full consent to the data collector. USP-MCBG questionnaire is an interactive approach between the patient and the pharmacist, which takes into account the patient’s special needs, beliefs and perceptions about medication use .The questionnaire included 33 items with a two-point response scale. The questionnaire was divided into four sections corresponding to the four stages of the medication counseling process. Results: During the study period, 520 subjects were enrolled and of these, 486 responded to our questionnaire (response rate: 93%). The study population was gender balanced; most respondents (88%) were Saudi nationals, and 49% reported having at least high school education. There were no differences between the socio-demographic profiles of participants at the two study sites. The overall mean USP-MCBG score of satisfaction was 3.18 ± 0.11 (highest score is 5). Within subsections of the questionnaire, ‘Management of treatment’ scored the highest (1.14 ± 0.05) and ‘Communication’ scored the lowest (0.35 ± 0.03). In terms of medication counseling, more than >80% of patients had a positive perception and were satisfied with the performance of outpatient pharmacists. At almost all stages of the counseling process, there was a slightly inversely proportional relationship between patient age and satisfaction with pharmacist performance.Conclusion: Using the USP-MCB guidelines, patients’ perception of and satisfaction with pharmacists counseling in the outpatient setting was positive. Greater effort is needed to ensure effective counseling services in particular subpopulations, such as in the elderly. In general, patients were more satisfied with pharmacist counseling pertinent to “management of treatment”, however, they were less satisfied regarding the pharmacists’ way of communication.