Patients’ perceptions of medication counseling and education provided by pharmacists

Pharmacists can increase patients’ knowledge and understanding of their medications and assist them to make appropriate decisions. However, clients’ perception is a rate determining step to their accepting such Pharmacists roles. In this study we evaluated clients’ perceptions on pharmacists provided medication counseling and education. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted using a 27 item, three sectioned questionnaire among 405 respondents > 16years old for 10 weeks in secondary Health facility in Lagos state. Nigeria. Using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22, descriptive analysis (frequency), reliability (Cronbach alpha), correlation (spearman’s rho), association (chi-square) were conducted with P value< 0.05. Three (3) was used as a logical mid-point and a positive perception was assumed if an overall mean of above 3 was obtained. Majority of the respondents were female 267 (65.9%), 47.4% fall within the age range of 20-39 years, and the highest proportion of respondents (44%) have secondary school educational qualification. About half of the respondents strongly disagreed that pharmacists are responsible for providing information on disease condition and minor ailments 181(44.7%) and strongly agreed that pharmacists always indicate medication use in writing, 278 (68.6%), there was correlation between this and pharmacists usually re-emphasized information in writing using spearman’s rho (p=0.000). Most respondents strongly disagreed that pharmacy is only a business and of no benefit to patients 314 (78.9%) and 270 (66.7%) agreed that pharmacists should be an integral part of the health delivery system. Overall mean ± SD was 4.11 ± 0.841, while mean ± SD on patients’ knowledge of pharmacists’ roles and their opinion on usefulness of pharmacists counseling and education were 4.26 ± 0.839 and 3.95 ± 0.840 respectively. Overall value of 0.66 was obtained for reliability test using Cronbach’s’ alpha. There is significant association between the patients’ age and their perception on need to go back to physician for clarification on medication use after pharmacists counseling (P=0.000), also between respondents’ gender and their perception that counseling received from pharmacists has benefits to them. (P=0.007). Generally, respondents have positive perceptions on pharmacist provided medication counseling and education. Our study results showed that pharmacists are seen as important professionals in providing medication related information.