Abstract
Objective: The first objective of this work was to examine the services provided by six drug information centers (DICs) in Alexandria, Egypt. The second objective was to evaluate the quality of the replies to the drug information query. The third objective was to assess the conceptual need of DICs from community pharmacists, other health care professionals and the general public.Methods: This study was conducted through three stages. Stage I was a field survey to assess predefined parameters in the current DICs in Alexandria. Stage II was a retrospective cross-sectional study to assess the quality of the drug information replies through an external expert review process. Stage III was a population survey and thematic analysis using questionnaires and interview recording.Results: Activities of DICs include: DIR answering service (100%), adverse drug reaction reporting (100%), issuing bulletins (83.3%), education (83.3%), drug use evaluation (50%) and participation in P and T committees (33.3%). The most frequent question categories asked were dosing, side effects, treatment guidelines and drug interactions. Half of the DICs were affiliated with hospitals; however, a general lacking confidence level of these DICs on the professionalism and the impact on patient care for the DIC services provided was identified. There was an obvious problem in formatting the ultimate question in a question format rather than a sentence format in all DICs. The most accurately answered request was adverse drug reactions. All surveyed groups considered that it is very important to have a DIC accessible to the community free of charge.Conclusion: It is necessary to establish an university-based DIC to incorporate training, education and research into the existing services. A DIC network with definitive standards of services in the future should provide safe and effective quality-assured pharmaceutical care to meet the needs and expectations of the community and improve its delivery to the public. The results and recommendations of this study can be inspired and generalized to other developing countries that have similar health systems as in Egypt.
Highlights
Drug information centers (DICs) have been established for more than 50 y in the U
We identified six DICs that met our inclusion criteria according to the information provided by the Alexandria Pharmacy Syndicate and Ministry of Health, including Ras ElTin Hospital, Fever Hospital, Anfushi Hospital, Health Insurance Hospital, Amrawy health unit and Alexandria pharmacy syndicate
Half of the DICs in Alexandria were affiliated with hospitals
Summary
Drug information centers (DICs) have been established for more than 50 y in the U. It was reported that DICs in Europe were mainly affiliated with hospitals, whereas a comparatively less affiliation with a faculty of pharmacy or faculty of medicine [6] This finding was different from the situation in the US [1], where most of the DICs were located at the faculties of pharmacy and was in concordance with the previous surveys in Europe [7, 8] where the number of DICs within a faculty of pharmacy was lower than within a faculty of medicine. Why there were so few DICs under the umbrella of the faculty of pharmacy in Europe
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