Gul Alam Khan, Shehzad Ali Khan, Salahuddin Khan, Ashfaq Ahmed, Aminullah Khan.
Quantitative assessment of patient satisfaction regarding pharmacy care services at DHQ hospital, Ziarat, Balochistan.
Pak J Public Health Jan ;5(3):40-6.
Introduction: Hospitals are place of interaction between physicians and patients. Both patients and doctors rely on pharmacy services because pharmacy has to provide the prescribed medicines and proper guidance about their usage. Patient satisfaction towards pharmacy services is an understudied subject in Pakistan. Due to inappropriate measures and planning, quality in provision of pharmacy services is often compromised. This study aimed to assess the disparities and problems in acquisition of superlative pharmacy services, thus effecting the patient's satisfaction. Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted at DHQ Hospital ziarat, Balochistan. The study participants were selected through convenient sampling method and were 290. The data was collected and analyzed through SPSS. Likert sacle and Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to determine differences between two or more groups of an independent variable on a continuous or ordinal dependent variable. Results: The quality of pharmacy services provided by hospital pharmacy was not satisfactory. About half of the respondents were not satised with the proper guidance regarding pharmacy location. About two third (64.1%) respondents disagree with good maintenance and proper availability of required medicine in pharmacy. 60% of study population failed to get all prescribed medicines from hospital pharmacy few of them remain unavailable. More than half of respondents were not satised about knowledge of pharmacy technician, information given regarding medicine usage and adequate availability of pharmacy staff. Pharmacy technicians did not provide any information regarding change of medication. In case of unavailability of medicine in the pharmacy technicians should provide proper guidance about main store or other nearby pharmacy from where patients can get prescribed medication. Pharmacy staff has good communication skills according 53.8% study respondents. About 46.2% respondents disagree that pharmacy staff provided guidance about proper storage of medicine. According to 53.8% participants, waiting time for medicine is not acceptable. A statistically signicant difference among the number of respondents with context to their response was found. (p=0.000) Conclusion: Provision of satisfactory pharmacy services should be the main objective of any hospital pharmacy but services provided at pharmacy, DHQ hospital, Ziarat, Balochistan were not satisfactory according to current study ndings. This study nding following factors i.e. adequate pharmacy staff, Proper availability of the medicines, trained pharmacy technicians, proper guidance of the patients regarding usage, storage and dispensing of the medicines are very poor at hospital pharmacy. Key words: Pharmacy services, Medication, Dispensing, Hospital Pharmacy
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