Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Knowledge of pharmacists on proper use of oral contraceptive pills and missed dose instructions in United Arab Emirates

Osama M Ibrahim^1,2 , Rand N Hussein¹

For correspondence:- Osama Ibrahim Email: oibrahim@sharjah.ac.ae Tel:+971501667203

Received: 9 December 2016 Accepted: 17 March 2017 Published: 30 April 2017

Citation: Ibrahim OM, Hussein RN. Knowledge of pharmacists on proper use of oral contraceptive pills and missed dose instructions in United Arab Emirates. Trop J Pharm Res 2017; 16(4):947-954 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v16i4.29

© 2017 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 assess the knowledge of community pharmacists and senior pharmacy students in United Arab Emirates (UAE) about the proper use of oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) and to investigate factors associated with their knowledge.

Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a validated self-administered questionnaire to community pharmacists and senior pharmacy students in UAE. The survey contained 22 questions divided into 3 parts: a) demographic information, b) OCPs general knowledge, c) OCPs proper use and missed dose instructions.

Results: Community pharmacists had significantly higher knowledge scores than senior pharmacy students (26 vs 16.6 %; p = 0.032). Pharmacists with 10 - 20 years of experience had significantly lower knowledge scores than pharmacists with < 10 years of experience (p < 0.05). Conversely, gender, marital status and previous education on OCPs were not associated with knowledge score (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: Participants had poor knowledge of proper use and missed dose instructions along with several misconceptions of OCPs. This can be enhanced by encouraging pharmacists to enroll in continuous educations activities that provide updated information about OCPs. Additionally, inclusion of an intensive elective course on OCPs in undergraduate pharmacy curricula may be helpful

Keywords: Oral contraceptives, Pharmacists, Pharmacy students, Counselling skills, misconceptions