Barriers to the implementation of Pharmaceutical Care into the UAE community pharmacies

Abstract

Community pharmacy practice setting provides the opportunity for pharmacists to be "the most accessible health care providers”, however still the role of the pharmacists considered as product oriented and mainly concentrate on distribution and prescription filling. In order for advanced pharmacy practice to become an effective reality we must be willing to admit certain challenges embodied by barriers to pharmaceutical care. Thus, this study considered as the first of its kind to be held in UAE community pharmacies aimed to explore the extent of obstacles to the professional services provided through community pharmacies in the UAE and to provide baseline data critical to inform the development of strategies to success implementation of pharmaceutical care. Descriptive Qualitative Survey was conducted, which involved exploring data from randomly selected pharmacists working in different UAE community pharmacies. The respondents asked to indicate the degree of the agreement to (37) barriers to the application of pharmaceutical care, using 5-point Likert-type scale. SPSS software program for windows Version (20) used to perform statistical analysis needed. Frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations were used to describe pharmacists' responses. Mann- Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis Test were used to assess the association between these barriers and demographic characteristics. Overall results showed that; lack of time (64.7%), insufficient staff number (61.9%) and lack of motivation (61.1%) are the main barriers to provide pharmaceutical care by community pharmacists in the UAE. The provision of pharmaceutical care is not regarded as such over the seven emirates. Although same barriers can be identified, their local importance showed some differences. There were significant differences in gender, age and experience in the estimate of barriers. Pharmacists expressed a willingness to implement pharmaceutical care practice but have recognized a number of barriers to successful implementation. KEYWORDS