Community Pharmacists' Knowledge and Practice toward Upper Respiratory Tract Infections in Khartoum State

Abstract

Background: Upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) are mainly viral in their etiologies but sometimes are complicated by secondary bacterial infections detected by the persistence of symptoms. This study aimed to evaluate community pharmacist's knowledge and practice regarding URTIs. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed using self-administered questionnaire. The study targeted 338 community pharmacists selected randomly from community pharmacies in Khartoum state. The overall knowledge and practice scores were calculated, then the associations between these scores and demographic characteristics were evaluated using Chi-square test and analyzed by statistical package for social sciences. Results: Out of 327 pharmacists, 65.4% of them were females. Whereas pharmacists with B. Pharm. represented 79.1%. Regarding the knowledge, it was found that 59.7% of community pharmacists have sufficient knowledge toward URTIs, while 40.3% of them have insufficient knowledge. Community pharmacists exhibited varying degrees of practice, but most of them have a good practice. Furthermore, 52.6% of them reported patient's interest as barrier to counseling, while 38.9% reported pharmacy crowdedness as a barrier. Statistically, higher knowledge scores are associated mainly with female gender and educational levels. On the another hand, 64.4% of the participants relied on medical websites as a source of information. Conclusion: Community pharmacists have good knowledge about URTIs. The practice is diverse, but good practice is mainly linked to those with sufficient knowledge. Most of the community pharmacists relied on medical websites as a source of information.