ABSTRACT
Background: Patient medication counseling is a pharmaceutical service focused at providing medication information orally or written form to the patient or their representative on direction of use, advice on side effects, precaution, storage , diet and life style modifications. This study examine the extent of Pharmacist counseling content and process among outpatient with chronic diseases.
Methods: A descriptive cross- sectional study was conducted in three health facilities and the extent of patients medication counseling content and process among Pharmacist's and intern's were observed consecutively. A standard questionnaire was used as a tool for collecting of information. The USP medications counseling behavior guidelines (USP- MCBG) has been used to evaluate patient medication counseling and has been found reliable even after modifications . The questionnaire consist of two domains, the content and process domains . USP-MCBG scale graded response from 1 to 10 for this study. Collected data were compiled, managed and analysed using MS Excel and SPSS. Association between demographic variables and the content and Process of patients medications counseling were determined using Chi-square test at P < 0.05
Results: A total of 150 observations were made. the results showed a frequency/ percentage distribution for each of the items. A descriptive statistics for each of the domains which gave an average mean for the patients medications counseling for content and process section to be 5.95±6.05 and 6.70±6.37. Lastly the results showed an inferential statistics highlighting the association between the the demographics and the various domains. the P-value for the association between patient counseling content and Gender, Years of experience and Qualifications are 0.406 ,0.048 and 0.316. Also the P-value for the association between patient counseling Process and Gender, Years of experience and Qualifications are 0.321, 0.119 and 0.361.
Conclusion: Assessing the content and process of Patient medication counselling using an established guideline shows the incompleteness of the medication information given to outpatient with chronic diseases. Overall, the extent of counselling provided by the pharmacists and intern's were unsatisfactory.
KEYWORDS: Patient Counseling, Pharmacists, United States Pharmacopeia Medication Counselling Behaviour Guideline.
