User-Pharmacy Cashier Relations: Perceptions mobilized by medical prescription holders around pharmacy cashiers in the Abidjan district (Côte d'Ivoire)

Abstract

Having a medical prescription and agreeing to pay for medications prescribed by the doctor in an official pharmacy is a process with many obstacles. While the existing documentation on the issue to identify barriers such as the level of financial endowment of the user, and the representation that the user makes of the prescription, but it has rarely led to the actual practices of cashiers pharmacy away from social norms. This practice coming from the pharmacy cashiers and criticized by the users must not remain free of all suspicions since it can condition or motivate the use and the effective attendance of the pharmacies. And yet, despite its impact on the promotion of public health in Africa, this angle attracts less attention from researchers and specialists in the field, either because it is too trivial, because it is a well-established tradition, or because that this angle remains unsuspected in the construction of the protocol of investigation or research. Consequently, there is a hardening of the relationship between users and pharmacy cashiers. This explains in part the mass orientation of users including those with a low level of education towards street drugs. In addition, the relationship between users and pharmacy cashiers remains sub-standard in certain pharmacies while it is good in other pharmacies in the same geographical area. It is this neglected or dead angle that varies from one pharmacy to another and deconstructs the medical and/or commercial relationship between users and pharmacy cashiers that this article attempts to question. to enrich the debate on the issue of access to health care. To achieve this, the study is based on a field survey as part of a qualitative approach based on rooted theory or grounded theory.