World Journal of
Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences

ASSESSMENT OF PHARMACY PRACTICE QUALITY USING AN INDICATOR BASED TOOL; A SURVEY OF COMMUNITY PHARMACIES IN ABUJA, NIGERIA

Dr. Paul Otor Onah*, Pharm Ahmed Abdulmalik and Pharm Aliyu Kaigamma

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Community pharmacies offer a variety of services which differ widely in scope and content depending on legal and regulatory environment. There has been rapid evolution in pharmacy curriculum from product to patient oriented services. The global acceptance of pharmaceutical care philosophy led many countries to develop practice standards that improve quality of treatment and outcome based practice. In privately owned community pharmacies in poor resource settings like Nigeria, there have been concerns about quality of patient services. Good pharmacy practice standards are based on the principle of structure – process and outcomes. A number of indicators focusing on different aspects of pharmacy services are available, though none is universally accepted. So assessment tends to be based on suitability of tools in settings. Community pharmacies in Nigeria hold the potential of bridging the gap in access to quality medicines that is accessible and affordable. In addition they enable safe storage and dispensing of medicines, provide drug information, medication use advice and public health services as well as monitoring of treatment outcomes. Methods: A total of thirty three community pharmacies were evenly and randomly selected across ten districts of Abuja for the study. The various aspects of pharmacy services, dispensing, administration, drug storage, facilities and manpower were scored using pharmacy practice assessment tool. Results/Discussion: Majority of community pharmacies provided traditional dispensing (100%) and medication counseling (69.7%), many did not employ licensed pharmacy technicians (10.8%). Pharmacists were mostly young and inexperienced. The results of good pharmacy practice indicators showed that overall score for the five dimensions of quality was average. This suggests that quality of services was less than acceptable. The dispensing, storage, manpower and administrative processes needs improvement if they are to meet up with standards of good pharmacy practice. Conclusion: The quality of pharmacy services is below the standards that can be considered to be good pharmacy practice.

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