A comparison of patients’ and pharmacists’ satisfaction with medication counseling provided by community pharmacies: a cross-sectional survey

Yang et al. BMC Health Services Research (2016) 16:131 DOI 10.1186/s12913-016-1374-x RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access A comparison of patients’ and pharmacists’ satisfaction with medication counseling provided by community pharmacies: a cross-sectional survey Seungwon Yang1, Dasohm Kim2, Hye Joung Choi1 and Min Jung Chang1,2* Abstract Background: Medication counseling is a critical component of pharmaceutical care to promote the safe and effective use of medications and to maximize therapeutic outcomes. The assessment of patients’ and pharmacists’ satisfaction with medication counseling services could be one of the vital parameters for predicting the quality of pharmacy services. No study has measured and compared both patients’ and pharmacists’ satisfaction with medication counseling. The objectives of this study were to describe and compare patients’ and pharmacists’ levels of satisfaction with medication counseling services offered by community pharmacists in South Korea. Methods: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional survey. The online survey was distributed to patients and community pharmacists using a structured questionnaire. The questionnaires consisted of 4 main areas: (1) responders’ characteristics (2) current state of medication counseling methods provided by community pharmacies (3) overall satisfaction with medication counseling (4) demand for the development of medication counseling standards. A comparison between patients and pharmacists was made using either a chi-square test or a Fisher’s exact test. Results: Between June 13, 2014 and July 15, 2014, a total of 252 patients and 620 pharmacists completed the survey. It was found that 47.3 % of pharmacists and 34.0 % of patients were satisfied with the current medication counseling service. Pharmacists showed a higher degree of satisfaction with the medication counseling service compared to patients (p <0.05). A major reason for patients not being satisfied with the medication counseling from community pharmacists was the insufficient time spent on counseling (51.2 %). The pharmacists’ perception of a major barrier to providing appropriate medication counseling for patients was the lack of time (24.3 %). Moreover, a substantial number of patients (88 %) and pharmacists (73 %) supported the development of medication counseling standards to improve community pharmacist counseling services (p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study showed that both patients and pharmacists have low levels of satisfaction with the current medication counseling service offered by community pharmacists. This study provides baseline data for the development of national guidelines for medication counseling by pharmacists. Keywords: Medication counseling, Satisfaction, Survey, Community pharmacists, Patients * Correspondence: 1 Department of Pharmacy and Yonsei Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Yonsei University, 85 Songdogwahak-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon 21983, Republic of Korea 2 Department of Pharmaceutical Medicines and Regulatory Science, Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy, Yonsei University, Incheon, Republic of Korea © 2016 Yang et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Yang et al. BMC Health Services Research (2016) 16:131 Background Medication counseling has become a key priority for modern community pharmacists. Modern pharmacy practices display an evolving paradigm from traditional drug dispensing to more active and expanded clinical roles, including patient-oriented medication counseling activities [1, 2]. Medication counseling refers to “providing medication information orally or in written form to the patients or their representatives on directions of use, advice on side effects, precautions, storage, diet, and lifstyle modifications”[3]. Preliminary studies showed that through medication counseling, pharmacists may identify and correct drug-related problems, improve the patient’s knowledge about the proper use of medicines, increase patient satisfaction with the pharmacy service, and consequently optimize the patient quality of care [4–6]. Satisfaction assessment is considered an important indicator of the quality of the pharmacy service as it reflects whether the service is meeting one’s expectations or values. There is an increasing trend to assess satisfaction level when the pharmacy service has started to expand its scope of practice [7–10]. So far, previous studies have focused on the patients’ or pharmacists’ satisfaction with pharmacy services or with specific disease management services in developed countries, which is often difficult to generalize to other countries, such as South Korea, where the pharmacy service is still more likely to use the traditional role. Medication counseling practice by community pharmacists has been studied by performing surveys and evaluating patients’ or pharmacists’ satisfaction [9, 10]. Evaluating the level of satisfaction with medication counseling has become one of the pivotal components for predicting the quality of pharmacy services [10]. In South Korea, much attention has recently been focused on the issue of medication counseling practice by community pharmacists. Although it has been legally mandated that pharmacists are required to provide medication counseling to every patient [11], pharmacists have often failed to offer drug information to patients or only provide brief counseling upon patient request. As a result, morestringent regulations were recently announced imposing monetary penalties on pharmacists who do not provide medication information to patients with each prescription filled [12]. However, this mandate has not necessarily worked as intended, and the quality and content of information provided varies among pharmacists [13]. Although this clearly calls for the quality assessment of medication counseling at this point, no studies have been conducted to evaluate the satisfaction with medication counseling by community pharmacists. To date, no studies have compared pharmacists’ and patients’ view or satisfaction with the medication counseling practice. The feedback from a survey could help to identify differences in levels of Page 2 of 8 satisfaction with medication counseling between pharmacists and patients, and could assist in pinpointing areas for future improvement. This study represents the first attempt to measure and compare patients’ and pharmacists’ satisfaction with medication cou (...truncated)