Assessment of attitudes of Cuban university pharmacy students toward pharmaceutical care

Abstract

Objective: To describe the attitude of Cuban pharmacy students toward pharmaceutical care. Methods: This study is a descriptive approach to the standard Pharmaceutical Care Attitudes Survey among professional fourth year pharmacy students in Cuba. To assess the students’ attitudes towards pharmaceutical care, a five-point Likert Scale (rating from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) was utilized to measure the extent to which the students agreed on 13 statements related to pharmaceutical care. Sociodemographic characteristics including age, country of origin, current professional year, marital status, and pharmacy training experience. The survey tool was distributed to 42 students. High level of confidentiality and anonymity was maintained throughout the study period. Descriptive statistics on the sample characteristics and questionnaire items including means, standard deviations, and frequency distributions were computed. The reliability of the survey was assessed by calculating the Cronbach’s alpha. Results: A total of 30 students returned the survey. The main age was 21 years old, 82 percent were female, 70 percent were single (never married), and 5 percent had some pharmacy related work experience. Of the respondents, 90% agreed or strongly agreed that all pharmacists and pharmacy students should perform pharmaceutical care. About 80% strongly agreed that providing pharmaceutical care takes too much time and effort. The Cronbach’s alpha reached 0.87. Conclusions: Pharmacy students in the study indicated positive attitudes toward pharmaceutical care. Positive attitude ratings were associated with the pharmaceutical care teaching at the university and the teacher role, according to their experiences in this practice.