PRS23 - Effectiveness of A Short Training For Community Pharmacists To Improve Knowledge And Practice in Asthma Counselling – A Simulated Patient Method

Abstract

Community pharmacy is a major link in the asthma therapy chain. However, community pharmacists have insufficient knowledge about asthma and asthma medications for counselling patients effectively in Vietnam. The study aimed to investigate improvement in knowledge and practice of community pharmacists in asthma counselling after attending a short training course 300 pharmacists consented to participate in a study using simulated patients. A knowledge questionnaire about asthma medications and a standardized inhaler checklist were designed to test before and after training. Pharmacists were invited to attend a short training course (3h) focused on counselling asthma patients (asthma control, distinguish relievers and controllers, side effects, medication adherence, inhaler technique teaching). After the training, 10 simulated patients trained with a standardized asthma case were sent to the community pharmacy to test the pharmacist’s knowledge and practice After the training, number of correct answer and score of asthma knowledge of pharmacists increased remarkably (p<0.001). While there was no pharmacist performed correctly both metered-dose inhaler (MDI) and dry powder inhaler (DPI) in pre-training, >50% performed correctly in post-training (p<0.001). Regarding tested by simulated patients, knowledge and practice of pharmacists in the training group improved significantly. 94.3% of pharmacists in training group could distinguish relievers and controllers compared with under 50% in no-training group (p<0.001). Percentage of pharmacists counselling correctly about controller adherence in training group was statistically higher than no-training group (91.8% vs 63.6%). Pharmacists attended training also performed better in counselling asthma patients about side effects of asthma medications (p<0.001). When teaching patients in pharmacy, inhaler technique score of training group was significantly higher than the no-training group (6.1 vs 4.3, p<0.001) A short training course was effective in providing community pharmacists with necessary knowledge about asthma and medications to improve quality of counselling asthma patients in community pharmacy