The pharmacist's role in managing and ameliorating childhood's asthma care: a descriptive and transversal study about 104 pharmacists in the city of Rabat in Morocco.

Bousayna Iraqi,Amina Iraqi,Chafiq Mahraoui,Imane Jroundi

doi:10.11604/pamj.2018.30.101.11593

Abstract

This work aims at enhancing the management of childhood asthma, with a focus on pharmacists in particular, by evaluating their knowledge of childhood asthma and assessing their attitude while they are providing asthma medicines. Consequently, it will look at the necessity of introducing training days about childhood asthma for pharmacists. This is a transversal and descriptive study which lingered from August to October 2015. Data has been collected using a questionnaire that was self-administered to every surveyed pharmacist in the city of Rabat. The 104 pharmacists who replied to the questionnaire have an average general understanding about asthma and its treatment. Only a quarter of them managed an asthma crisis in their pharmacy before directing the child to the emergency. 50% of them do not know the difference between the basic asthma therapy and the asthma attack therapy. However, all of them recommended the parents to see a physician regarding their child’s asthma. 75% advise the systematic use of an asthma spacer with the inhaler. 87.5% of them give advice to parents regarding the good measures for environmental control, and 98% estimate that the therapeutic education is important in childhood asthma management. 88.5% among them are interested in training days about childhood asthma.This study shows the necessity of further pharmacists’ education about asthma and its management.

Highlights

This work aims at enhancing the management of childhood asthma, with a focus on pharmacists in particular, by evaluating their knowledge of childhood asthma and assessing their attitude while they are providing asthma medicines
More than 52% of the interviewed pharmacists think that Asthma is not a chronic disease. 90% confirm that asthma is a lung allergy that could be healed by avoiding triggering factors. 90% are aware that asthma could lead to death
A percentage of 14.4% of interviewed pharmacists estimate that an asthmatic child should not practice a sport activity, whereas 86.7% estimate that allergic rhinitis is an aggravating factor of child asthma

Summary

Introduction

This work aims at enhancing the management of childhood asthma, with a focus on pharmacists in particular, by evaluating their knowledge of childhood asthma and assessing their attitude while they are providing asthma medicines. 87.5% of them give advice to parents regarding the good measures for environmental control, and 98% estimate that the therapeutic education is important in childhood asthma management. This work aims at assessing the knowledge and attitude of pharmacists while they are providing asthma medicines for childhood asthma This is a transversal descriptive study conducted among pharmacists working in private offices in the city of Rabat, which lingered from August to October 2015. Regarding the assessment of the Knowledge and behavior during an asthma crisis, a percentage of 55.3% of the pharmacists require a prescription before issuing treatment to the asthmatic child,and all of them recommended the parents to see a physician regarding their child’s asthma. More than half of them (52%) find difficulties in answering all the questions asked by parents, and 88.5% among them would be interested in training days about childhood asthma

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion