Knowledge of cardiovascular disease risk factors, practice, and barriers of community pharmacists on cardiovascular disease prevention in North West Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: In Ethiopia, there are no adequate studies made on the knowledge and practice of CVD and its risk factors among community pharmacists. Thus, this study aimed to assess knowledge of cardiovascular disease risk factors, practice, and barriers of community pharmacists on cardiovascular disease prevention. METHODS: A Cross-sectional study was conducted on a total of 81 community pharmacists from the first march to May 30, 2020, at Gondar town. Data was entered to EPI-INFO 7 and exported to SPSS software for windows version 20 for analysis. The results are presented by using tables and figures. The chi-square test was applied to test the relationship between Knowledge and independent variables. P-value ≤ 0.05 was considered as statistical significance. RESULT: Of the participants, 45 (55.6%) of them were found knowledgeable about cardiovascular disease. On the other hand, only 18.5%, 77.8%, and 93.8% of the study participants respectively were aware of CVD risk factors like symptoms of heart disease, the connection of family history of heart disease, and the connection between old age and heart disease. Only 21% of the study participants had known the existence of HTN guidelines in Ethiopia. X(2) statistical analysis showed that there was no statistically significant association between age (P = 0.82), gender (P = 0.661). Marital statuses (P > 0.50), number of years of practice (P = 0.796) and cardiovascular disease. The main barriers to the prevention of CVD for community pharmacists were, lack of time (18.5%), inability to identify targeted patients (65.4%), lack of knowledge (23%), and lack of communication (26%). CONCLUSION: The overall assessment of the pharmacists demonstrated that more than half of the participants were found knowledgeable. However, only a small proportion of the study participants had known about the existence of National guidelines for cardiovascular disease in particular and non-communicable disease in general. Therefore, the provision of government policy that will regulate their training, certification, and practice for CVD screening and as well as provide a framework of incentives are recommended.