Continuing education in pharmacy: A cross-sectional study exploring pharmacists' attitudes and perceptions()

BACKGROUND: The pharmacy profession has changed enormously in the recent decades. Pharmacist role has been expanded beyond formulating and dispensing medications to include the provision of pharmaceutical care and public health services to patients. Patient-centred care requires sustained competency through improving pharmacist’s knowledge, skills, and performance. Such improvements require pharmacist’s involvement in continuing education activities although it is optional in Kuwait. OBJECTIVE: To explore pharmacists’ attitudes towards continuing education in Kuwait, and to investigate the perceived barriers that hinder pharmacists from being involved in continuing education activities. Setting. All governmental hospitals and polyclinics and private pharmacies in all the five health regions of Kuwait (Capital, Hawalli, Ahmadai, Farwaniyah, and Jahra). METHOD: A descriptive cross-sectional study conducted with full licensed pharmacists working in Kuwait. Pharmacists were asked to complete an adapted validated questionnaire composed of 14 items to measure their attitudes towards continuing education. In addition, it contains open-ended questions to obtain the type of learning activity undertaken by the pharmacists, and whether they have barriers that hinder them from being involved in continuing education. RESULTS: A total of 409 pharmacists completed the questionnaire. The participants had a median score of 44 (interquartile range = 41–47); good to excellent attitudes. Attitude scores were correlated with age and years of experience. Almost 70% of the participants had attended a continuing education activity within one year. The activity undertaken most by pharmacists was attending a seminar, compared to other activities. The main barriers to continuing education were lack of personal time (n = 383), lack of scientific databases and books (n = 187) and conferences are not regularly organized locally (n = 154). CONCLUSION: Pharmacists in Kuwait have positive attitudes towards continuing education overall. However, there are many obstacles that avert pharmacists to practice continuing education. Further studies are required to explore how to overcome the reported barriers and provide more feasible and relevant continuing education to pharmacists.