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Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project

BACKGROUND: The use of medicines is an essential component of many public health programs (PHPs). Medicines are important not only for their capacity to treat and prevent diseases. The public confidence in healthcare system is inevitably linked to their confidence in the availability of safe and eff...

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Autores principales: Oqua, Dorothy, Agu, Kenneth Anene, Isah, Mohammed Alfa, Onoh, Obialunamma U, Iyaji, Paul G, Wutoh, Anthony K, King, Rosalyn C
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3824707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24255831
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2193-1801-2-525
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author Oqua, Dorothy
Agu, Kenneth Anene
Isah, Mohammed Alfa
Onoh, Obialunamma U
Iyaji, Paul G
Wutoh, Anthony K
King, Rosalyn C
author_facet Oqua, Dorothy
Agu, Kenneth Anene
Isah, Mohammed Alfa
Onoh, Obialunamma U
Iyaji, Paul G
Wutoh, Anthony K
King, Rosalyn C
author_sort Oqua, Dorothy
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The use of medicines is an essential component of many public health programs (PHPs). Medicines are important not only for their capacity to treat and prevent diseases. The public confidence in healthcare system is inevitably linked to their confidence in the availability of safe and effective medicines and the measures for ensuring their rational use. However, pharmacy services component receives little or no attention in most public health programs in developing countries. This article describes the strategies, lessons learnt, and some accomplishments of Howard University Pharmacists and Continuing Education (HU-PACE) Centre towards improving hospital pharmacy practice through PHP in Nigeria. METHOD: In a cross-sectional survey, 60 hospital pharmacies were randomly selected from 184 GHAIN-supported health facilities. The assessment was conducted at baseline and repeated after at least 12 months post-intervention using a study-specific instrument. Interventions included engagement of stakeholders; provision of standards for infrastructural upgrade; development of curricula and modules for training of pharmacy personnel; provision of job aids and tools amongst others. A follow-up hands-on skill enhancement based on identified gaps was conducted. Chi-square was used for inferential statistics. All reported p-values were 2-tailed at 95% confidence interval. RESULTS: The mean duration of service provision at post-intervention assessment was 24.39 (95% CI, 21.70–27.08) months. About 16.7% of pharmacies reported been trained in HIV care at pre-intervention compared to 83.3% at post-intervention. The proportion of pharmacies with audio-visual privacy for patient counseling increased significantly from 30.9% at pre-intervention to 81.4% at post-intervention. Filled prescriptions were cross-checked by pharmacist (61.9%) and pharmacy technician (23.8%) before dispensing at pre-intervention compared to pharmacist (93.1%) and pharmacy technician (6.9%) at post intervention. 40.0% of pharmacies reported tracking consumption of drugs at pre-intervention compared to 98.3% at post-intervention; while 81.7% of pharmacies reported performing periodic stock reconciliation at pre-intervention compared to 100.0% at post-intervention. 36.5% of pharmacies were observed providing individual counseling on medication use to patients at pre-intervention compared to 73.2% at post-intervention; and 11.7% of pharmacies had evidence of monitoring and reporting of suspected adverse drug reaction at pre-intervention compared to 73.3% at post-intervention. The institution of access to patients’ clinical information by pharmacists in all pharmacies at post-intervention was a paradigm shift. CONCLUSION: Through public health program, HU-PACE created an enabling environment and improved capacity of pharmacy personnel for quality HIV/AIDS and TB services. This has contributed in diverse ways to better monitoring of patients on pharmacotherapy by pharmacists through access of pharmacists to patients’ clinical information.
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spelling pubmed-38247072013-11-19 Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project Oqua, Dorothy Agu, Kenneth Anene Isah, Mohammed Alfa Onoh, Obialunamma U Iyaji, Paul G Wutoh, Anthony K King, Rosalyn C Springerplus Research BACKGROUND: The use of medicines is an essential component of many public health programs (PHPs). Medicines are important not only for their capacity to treat and prevent diseases. The public confidence in healthcare system is inevitably linked to their confidence in the availability of safe and effective medicines and the measures for ensuring their rational use. However, pharmacy services component receives little or no attention in most public health programs in developing countries. This article describes the strategies, lessons learnt, and some accomplishments of Howard University Pharmacists and Continuing Education (HU-PACE) Centre towards improving hospital pharmacy practice through PHP in Nigeria. METHOD: In a cross-sectional survey, 60 hospital pharmacies were randomly selected from 184 GHAIN-supported health facilities. The assessment was conducted at baseline and repeated after at least 12 months post-intervention using a study-specific instrument. Interventions included engagement of stakeholders; provision of standards for infrastructural upgrade; development of curricula and modules for training of pharmacy personnel; provision of job aids and tools amongst others. A follow-up hands-on skill enhancement based on identified gaps was conducted. Chi-square was used for inferential statistics. All reported p-values were 2-tailed at 95% confidence interval. RESULTS: The mean duration of service provision at post-intervention assessment was 24.39 (95% CI, 21.70–27.08) months. About 16.7% of pharmacies reported been trained in HIV care at pre-intervention compared to 83.3% at post-intervention. The proportion of pharmacies with audio-visual privacy for patient counseling increased significantly from 30.9% at pre-intervention to 81.4% at post-intervention. Filled prescriptions were cross-checked by pharmacist (61.9%) and pharmacy technician (23.8%) before dispensing at pre-intervention compared to pharmacist (93.1%) and pharmacy technician (6.9%) at post intervention. 40.0% of pharmacies reported tracking consumption of drugs at pre-intervention compared to 98.3% at post-intervention; while 81.7% of pharmacies reported performing periodic stock reconciliation at pre-intervention compared to 100.0% at post-intervention. 36.5% of pharmacies were observed providing individual counseling on medication use to patients at pre-intervention compared to 73.2% at post-intervention; and 11.7% of pharmacies had evidence of monitoring and reporting of suspected adverse drug reaction at pre-intervention compared to 73.3% at post-intervention. The institution of access to patients’ clinical information by pharmacists in all pharmacies at post-intervention was a paradigm shift. CONCLUSION: Through public health program, HU-PACE created an enabling environment and improved capacity of pharmacy personnel for quality HIV/AIDS and TB services. This has contributed in diverse ways to better monitoring of patients on pharmacotherapy by pharmacists through access of pharmacists to patients’ clinical information. Springer International Publishing 2013-10-17 /pmc/articles/PMC3824707/ /pubmed/24255831 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2193-1801-2-525 Text en © Oqua et al.; licensee Springer. 2013 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Oqua, Dorothy
Agu, Kenneth Anene
Isah, Mohammed Alfa
Onoh, Obialunamma U
Iyaji, Paul G
Wutoh, Anthony K
King, Rosalyn C
Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project
title Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project
title_full Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project
title_fullStr Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project
title_full_unstemmed Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project
title_short Improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from Global HIV/AIDS initiative Nigeria project
title_sort improving pharmacy practice through public health programs: experience from global hiv/aids initiative nigeria project
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3824707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24255831
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2193-1801-2-525
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