A Mix-Methodological Assessment Of Community Pharmacists’ Perception Towards Online Health Information In Federal Territory Of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Date
2018-07
Authors
Ong, See Wan
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Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Internet has become a common tool used by both healthcare professionals and the public to acquire up-to-date health-related information to improve their knowledge. Most of the studies described the growth of use of Internet around physicians, but information scarcity is reported around community pharmacists (CPs). Hence, this research was proposed in order to have better understanding of the current and future implications of Internet use for health information among Malaysian CPs. The objectives: (i) to explore CPs’ perceptions on health-related information obtained from Internet; (ii) to identify the type of professional activities or online health-related information sought by CPs; and (iii) to investigate the barriers while retrieving online health-related information. Sequential exploratory mixed-methodology was adopted in this research, where phase-one was qualitative study and quantitative in phase-two, targeting CPs practising in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Face-to-face interviews were adopted for qualitative study. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit participants. Upon participants’ agreement, interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and then analysed thematically. Phase-one consists of 11 participants and four major themes were identified. They claimed that the online health-related information is useful, easily accessible, and perceived that Internet is a unique source. Nevertheless, information should be obtained from established online sources. They expressed the need of training on information searching and website evaluation, and provision a list of credentialed websites.
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Keywords
Pharmacists’ perception towards online health information , in federal territory of Kuala Lumpur
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