1Department
of Clinical Pharmacy & Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of
Pharmacy, University of Benin, Benin City, 2Ranbaxy
(Nig) Ltd, PO Box 4452, Ikeja, Nigeria
For correspondence:
E-mail: enatoefo@uniben.edu
or
ehise2002@yahoo.com
Purpose:
To assess the
impact of an educational intervention on pharmacists’
medication counselling practice, and evaluate the
reliability of an instrument to assess medication
counselling in a psychiatric setting.
Methods:
The study was undertaken on a sample of 297 psychiatric
patients. Pre- and post-intervention surveys were
conducted immediately after the patients had been
attended to at the hospital’s outpatient pharmacy, using
a self-administered questionnaire, comprising 4
components. Internal consistency of the questionnaire
was computed using Cronbach’s alpha. Differences between
means or proportions of variables were evaluated using
Student’s t-test or Chi-square test, as appropriate.
Results:
The study achieved a response rate of 89 and 92 % for
pre– and post–intervention surveys, respectively.
Cronbach’s alpha reliability of the instrument was found
to be 0.74. The mean values for the different components
evaluated during the pre- and post–intervention surveys
were: Needs assessment, 1.89± 0.76 and 2.58 ± 0.61;
Precaution and warning, 1.50 ± 0.67 and 2.15 ± 0.63;
Managing therapy, 1.87 ± 0.89 and 2.46 ± 0.78, and
Communication, 2.23 ± 0.77 and 2.69 ± 0.62,
respectively. The post–intervention results were
significantly higher in all the components (p < 0.05).
Conclusion:
The educational intervention provided for pharmacists
resulted in an improvement in patient counselling. The
survey instrument achieved a fairly satisfactory
reliability result in a psychiatric setting. Efforts to
sustain this intervention are recommended.
Keywords:
Assessment, Patient counselling, Pharmacists,
Psychiatric setting.
