Knowledge, attitude, and practice of community pharmacists toward dispensing drugs available in different delivery systems at Khartoum locality

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Many Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs are available in different delivery systems, such as immediate-release, delayed-release, and extended-release systems. Community pharmacists are supposed to have good knowledge about the differences between those formulations and adopt a systemic dispensing of drugs with the different delivery systems. Thus, this study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of community pharmacists toward dispensing drugs with varying systems of delivery. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among community pharmacists (n = 172) using a validated self-administered questionnaire. A simple random sampling method was applied to select the participants. The overall knowledge, attitude, and practice scores were calculated, and then, the associations between these scores and demographic characteristics were measured by Chi-square test and analyzed by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). RESULTS: Out of 172 pharmacists, 67.4% of them were female, whereas pharmacists with bachelor represented 68%. Regarding the knowledge of the respondents, 19.8%, 44.2%, and 36% of them have high, moderate, and low levels of knowledge, respectively. Furthermore, 76.7% of the respondents showed a negative attitude, whereas 23.3% of the total respondents have a positive attitude. In addition, 52% of the pharmacists exhibited good practice performance, whereas 48% had a bad practice toward dispensing available drugs with multiple formulations. Moreover, there are positive correlations between knowledge, attitude, and practice of pharmacists in dispensing drugs available with different delivery systems. CONCLUSION: 44.2% of the community pharmacists have a moderate level of knowledge, 76.7% had a negative attitude, and 52% had a good practice toward dispensing drugs with different delivery systems.