Evaluation of Knowledge and Conducts of Pharmacists in Drugstores of Salvador (BA)

Keywords: Pharmacist. Dispensing. Pharmaceutical care. Drugstore. Knowledge. Conducts.

Before the industrialization process in Brazil, the pharmacist was responsible for research, manipulation and quality control of medicines, besides providing counseling and guidance to patients; when, however, medicines started to be produced on a large scale, the pharmacist faced function loss and distancing from patients. In the last decades, many changes have occurred in order to reorient pharmaceutical practice, from the dispensing act being better understood to the development of pharmaceutical care as model of practice. The goal of this work was to verify the knowledge and conduct of pharmacists in drugstores in the city of Salvador (Bahia) regarding dispensing and provided pharmaceutical services. Therefore, a cross-sectional and descriptive study was performed, from February to July 2019 (data collection), in which pharmacists working in drugstores in the 12 Sanitary Districts of Salvador were visited and invited to participate in this research; a questionnaire validated by Reis (2013) was applied, with adaptations made after recommendations by CEP/FAR/UFBA, containing 44 questions sectioned into general data, knowledge and conduct; and for statistical analysis, Microsoft Excel Version 16.0.12130.20390 and IBM SPSS Statistics 21 were used. Among the 321 pharmacists visited, 154 (48%) agreed to participate in the research; the participants were female (77.3%), the average age was 33.2 years, graduated with generalist curriculum (87.6%), studied in private institutions (72.4%) and assumed the position of responsible pharmacists of drugstores (65.6%), with the majority of them (69.28%) having centralized administration. The result obtained about knowledge related to medication dispensing was considered satisfactory for 40.9% of pharmacists, regular for 51.3% and unsatisfactory for only 7.8% of them; and as for the concept of pharmaceutical care, 64.9% obtained a satisfactory result. About conducts, pharmacists reported that they informed more about dosage, adverse reactions and product preservation during dispensing; 19.1% had the inadequate practice of indicating prescription drugs; 30.5% said they performed pharmaceutical care, but only 4.5% of them knew the concept, worked in a drugstore whose physical structure they considered adequate, made documentation and records, and the service was included in the SOPs manual. Concerning professional practice, 35.7% of pharmacists evaluated themselves as accomplished, 26.6% needed to improve knowledge related to the pharmaceutical area, 9.1% needed to improve compliance with legislation, 48.1% needed to improve patient orientation and pharmacotherapeutic follow-up, and 0.6% felt terrible. Finally, data obtained through this research indicate that drugstores did not have a physical structure and/or clinical services implemented in an adequate or satisfactory manner, affecting the act of dispensing medications and pharmaceutical care service, which would enable the rescue of pharmacist-patient relationship and would help to reestablish the pharmacist's social role in the community.