%0 Journal Article
%T Qualification, knowledge and experience of dispensers working at community pharmacies in Pakistan
%A Hussain
%A Azhar
%A Ibrahim
%A Mohamed Izham M.
%J Pharmacy Practice (Internet)
%D 2011
%I Scientific Electronic Library Online
%R 10.4321/S1886-36552011000200006
%X pharmacies are managed by a variety of dispensers in terms of qualification, knowledge and experience in pakistan. objective: the study aimed to document the state of knowledge, experience and qualification of dispensers working at community pharmacies in pakistan. methods: a comparative cross sectional study was conducted at a randomly selected sample of 371 pharmacies in the three cities of pakistan. a structured questionnaire for data collection was developed and finalized by focused group discussions and pilot testing. the data was coded, entered and analyzed by using spss version 16. kruskal-wallis and mann-whitney tests (p¡Ü0.05) were performed to find out differences. results: out of total sample of 371 pharmacies, 31.8 % (118) were in islamabad, 32.4 % (120) in peshawar and 35.8 % (133) were in lahore. fifty percent of the respondents had correct knowledge of range of room temperature at which medicines should be stored. only 11.1% (41) of the respondents knew about otc (over the counter drugs) which can be sold without prescription while 5.9 % (22) of the respondents were aware of pom (prescription only medicines) which can be only sold on a valid prescription. while 87.6% (325), 88.1% (327), 58.7% (318) and 95.7 % (355) of the respondents did not know the meaning of the dispensing abbreviations such as 'h.s', 'q.d', 'sos' and 'p.r.n'. the respondents did not know correctly the status of deltacortil£¿ (prednisolone), septran£¿ (sulfamethoxazole) and fansidar£¿ (pyrimethamine and sulfadoxine) either as otc or pom in 26.7% (99), 64.2% (238), and 44.5 % (165) of the cases, respectively. there was a significant difference (p¡Ü0.05) in knowledge of dispensers regarding storage temperature, prescription terminologies and status of medicines having different level of qualification and experience. conclusions: the overall knowledge and training of dispensers working at community pharmacies is inadequate in pakistan. however, pharmacists had relatively better knowledge r
%K pharmacists' aides
%K professional competence
%K pharmacies
%K pakistan.
%U http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1886-36552011000200006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en