Thi Quynh Le, Thi Minh Nguyet Le, Thi Hong Phuong Vo, Viet Thanh Truong, Thi Hong Diep Phan, Quang Trung Tran, Chuyen Le, Ba Hoang Anh Mai, Tran Thao Nguyen Nguyen, The Thanh Nguyen, Erwin Martinez Faller, Thi Ha Vo

Journal of Applied Pharmaceutical Science, Volume: 10, Issue: 5, May, 2020, DOI: 10.7324/JAPS.2020.10516

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of educational interventions on the knowledge and counseling practice of community pharmacists in Hue, Vietnam with respect to common cold management.

Method: Thirty-eight pharmacists were invited to participate in educational initiatives, including in-class training and reference to a printed pocket handbook. The knowledge was measured before and after the interventions via a paper-based test, and actual practice was evaluated via a pseudo customer experiment a week later.

Results: The interventions significantly improved pharmacists’ knowledge (p = 0.001). In the pre-test, only 37.4% of the participants provided correct answers, but this increased to 83.9% in the post-test. In the pseudo customer experiment, pharmacists asked about patient identification, age, and symptoms (93.3%, 80.0%, and 80.0%, respectively) but not about medical and medication histories or allergies (less than 20%). All pharmacists offered advice as regards dosage, but only half of them shared information on drug names and indications. A third provided guidance on drug interactions. Practices related to inappropriate drug dispensing included the issuance of incorrect medications or the sale of prescription-only drugs to customers with no prescriptions.

Conclusion: Although educational interventions effectively enhance the knowledge and counseling practice of pharmacists, a huge gap continues to exist between these variables.