Community Pharmacy Services In Malaysia : Perspectives From General Practitioners, Community Pharmacy Practitioners, Consumers And Health Policy Stakeholders
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Date
2015-03
Authors
GUAT SEE, OOI
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Abstract
Roles of community pharmacists (CPs) have evolved in many parts of the world.
In developing countries such as Malaysia, little is known about the CPs’ role in
the broader context of the healthcare system. At present, research on extended
pharmacy services (e.g. medication therapy management, chronic disease
management, etc) provided by CPs in Malaysia remains scant. To effectively
develop and implement strategies to enhance the role of CPs in Malaysia, it is
important that the views of all the key stakeholders are explored. Accordingly,
this thesis has explored the views of the general practitioners (GPs), community
pharmacy practitioners (CPs), consumers and health policy stakeholders towards
CPs’ extended roles in the Malaysian healthcare system. A triangulation of
qualitative and quantitative methods was used in this study. For the four
qualitative studies, thirteen CPs, thirteen GPs, twenty-one consumers and seven
health policy stakeholders were interviewed. Thematic content analysis was used
to analyse the data and the major themes identified included: barriers to enhancing
professional roles, trends of community pharmacy practice in Malaysia,
implementation of dispensing separation, facilitators and barriers for consumers to
accept the roles of CPs as public health educators, perspectives of GPs on the
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current community pharmacy practice, knowledge and ability of CPs towards the
provision of extended pharmacy services, strategies to overcome the barriers, and
future direction of community pharmacy practice in Malaysia. Based on the
findings from the quantitative studies, two postal surveys were conducted to
explore the knowledge and preparedness of CPs (n=395) and the perception of
GPs (n=205) towards community pharmacy practice change in Malaysia. Majority
of the CPs (>70%) were still focusing on counselling for nutritional supplement,
cough and cold and diabetic, providing screening tests for blood pressure and
blood sugar level. The identified barriers to the delivery of pharmacy services
included lack of time, shortage of man power, lack of collaboration between
healthcare professionals, legal and regulatory constraints and lack of self-efficacy.
The study also found that in general, GPs were generally supportive towards the
involvement of CPs in extended pharmacy services but they were uncertain about
the knowledge and skills of CPs. Most of the GPs indicated that they would like to
collaborate with community pharmacists on improving patient therapeutic
outcomes (~55%) and welcome patient referral from community pharmacies for
further medical evaluation (~70%).!In conclusion, this thesis has investigated the
involvement of Malaysian community pharmacists in community pharmacy
services, from the perspectives of GPs, CPs, consumers and health policy
stakeholders. The current barriers towards the transformation of community
pharmacy practice in Malaysia were identified. Future actions including planning,
developing and implementing new policies are much needed. Based on the work
of this thesis, sets of recommendations have been made for all the key
stakeholders including CPs, policy makers and government authorities in order to
bring re-professionalism and improvement to this profession.!
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Keywords
Community Pharmacy Services In Malaysia : Perspectives From General Practitioners, Community Pharmacy Practitioners, Consumers And Health Policy Stakeholders , Community Pharmacy Practitioners, Consumers And Health Policy Stakeholders