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. 2022 Oct;30(10):1497-1506.
doi: 10.1016/j.jsps.2022.07.012. Epub 2022 Jul 29.

Self-reported and the actual involvement of community pharmacy professionals in the management of acute childhood diarrhea in Jazan Province, Saudi Arabia: Simulated patient visits and survey study

Eman Merghani Ali  1   2 , Saad S Alqahtani  1   2 , Nabeel Kashan Syed  1   2 , Otilia J F Banji  1   2 , Yahia Ali Mashragi  3 , Mohammed Ali Ageel  3 , Bashaer Abdullah Hakami  3 , Majed Hassan Mathkur  3 , Renad Mehsen Solan  4 , Amani Khardali  1   2 , Rina Tripathi  1   2
Affiliations

Self-reported and the actual involvement of community pharmacy professionals in the management of acute childhood diarrhea in Jazan Province, Saudi Arabia: Simulated patient visits and survey study

Eman Merghani Ali et al. Saudi Pharm J. 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Background: Acute childhood diarrhea is one of the most common causes of dehydration, and if severe, can potentially lead to death as well. The present study was aimed at evaluating the knowledge and attitudes of community pharmacy professionals towards the management of acute childhood diarrhea and comparing them with their actual practices in Jazan Province, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (K.S.A).

Methods: Simulated patient visits and a cross-sectional survey making use of a 27-item self-report questionnaire were conducted amongst a sample of 303 community pharmacy professionals (51.2 % male and 48.8 % female) with an age range of 25-56 years, between August 1 and December 1, 2021, in Jazan Province, Saudi Arabia. Convenience sampling technique was used for the recruitment of the participants.

Results: Significant positive correlations were seen between knowledge score (self-report survey) and practice score (simulated patient visit) regarding patients' history taking (r = 0.65; p < 0.01), drug recommendations (r = 0.71; p < 0.01) and providing information regarding food and fluid intake (r = 0.44; p < 0.01). The alpha coefficients for all the items of the survey instrument were noted to be greater than (or) equal to the 0.70 threshold for almost all sections, hence indicating good reliability and internal consistency of the developed scale.

Conclusion: In the present study, even though we observed improved participants' performance during the self report survey, their performance level greatly dropped in actual practice. This warrants for a need for educational programs to improve their actual dispensing practices. The present study has also shown simulated patient visits to be a reliable, simple and a robust method of assessing the actual dispensing practices of community pharmacy professionals.

Keywords: Acute childhood diarrhea; Attitudes; Community pharmacy professionals; Knowledge; Practices; Saudi Arabia; Self-report survey; Simulated patient visits.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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