Patients' perception and expectations of services provided by pharmacists in Ghanaian hospitals

Abstract

A customer’s perceived value of service has been identified as one of the most important drivers of satisfaction. Using a cross-sectional survey among out-patients with a chronic disease in Ghana, this study assessed their perception on the role of the hospital pharmacist, their expectation of services provided by the hospital pharmacist and the factors encouraging them to speak to the hospital pharmacist. This was a cross-sectional survey of out-patients during visits to pharmacies at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital. Six pharmacies with a high patronage of patients with chronic diseases were purposively selected. A structured questionnaire was completed using a face-to-face approach and the results were presented in the form of descriptive and analytical (logistic regression) statistics. In all, 331 respondents made up of 56.8% women and 43.2% men were interviewed. The mean age of respondents was 42 years. Of those who responded, 87.3% (289/331) have had at least basic education and 63.7% of respondents were in some form of employment. In all, 77.2% at least agreed that the pharmacist is a health professional just like doctors and nurses, and only 3.8% of respondents strongly disagreed that their awareness of the role of the pharmacist has improved over the last five years. It was found that those who reported little difficulty identifying the pharmacy staff were about three times as likely (OR 3.19, 95% CI 1.78 to 5.80, p < 0.001) to request to speak with the pharmacist compared to those who found this difficult. Counseling services at the various pharmacies in the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital need improvement. More work should be done by pharmacists to educate patients on the role of the pharmacist in providing pharmaceutical care. Key words: Patient’s perception, out-patient pharmacist, Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.