Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Attitudes and perceptions of healthcare providers towards clinical pharmacy services at a tertiary care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Mohamed N Al-Arifi¹ , B Alghamdi¹, M Al-Saadi², AE Idris¹, Syed Wajid¹, Ragab Said³, Salmeen D Babelghaith¹

¹Clinical Pharmacy Department, Drug and Poison Information Center, College of Pharmacy; ²College of Medicine King Saud Univeristy; ³Al Maarefa College of Pharmacy, Riyadh Saudi, Arabia.

For correspondence:- Mohamed Al-Arifi Email: malarifi@ksu.edu.sa Tel:+96614677352

Received: 3 December 2014 Accepted: 17 April 2015 Published: 26 May 2015

Citation: Al-Arifi MN, Alghamdi B, Al-Saadi M, Idris A, Wajid S, Said R, et al. Attitudes and perceptions of healthcare providers towards clinical pharmacy services at a tertiary care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Trop J Pharm Res 2015; 14(5):913-918 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v14i5.23

© 2015 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the attitudes and perceptions of health care providers towards clinical pharmacy services at King Khalid University Hospital Riyadh Saudi Arabia

Method: A cross-sectional survey of healthcare providers was conducted in King Khalid University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from September to November 2013. A self-administered questionnaire was delivered to health care professionals (HCPs) who included physicians, pharmacists and nurses.

Results: The response rate was 78 % (457/600). The majority of the respondents (92.4 %) knew that the clinical pharmacist is an integral part of the medical team while 86.5 % of the participants expressed confidence in the ability of clinical pharmacists to improve the quality of patient care through their practice. Despite the relative lack of awareness of the increasing interest in clinical pharmacy practice (59.6 % were not aware of such a trend), pharmacists were less appreciative (p < 0.05) of the positive role of clinical pharmacists in direct patient care compared to both physicians and nurses (67.4, 74.3 and 72.3 %, respectively).

Conclusion: The findings of this study reveal that health care professionals HCPs have positive attitude towards the role of the clinical pharmacist in the health care setting studied. However, there is a need for Saudi hospitals to adopt full clinical pharmacy service including drug monitoring, drug information and pharmacotherapy for enhanced health care.

Keywords: Saudi Arabia, Clinical pharmacy services, Healthcare professionals, Attitude, Patient care