Securing patient medication and reducing medication errors have been the major goals in the theme of patient safety these years. Community pharmacists have been referred as one of the key professionals to provide medication knowledge and consultation services to the public. This study was aimed to explore the intervention effects of community pharmacists on medication knowledge, medication consultation for community residents, under the implementation of a medical-pharmacy network demonstration project in central Taiwan.
This is a quasi-experimental design with community pharmacists’ pharmaceutical services as the intervention event. One thousand and ten community residents were surveyed, with 291 residents in the pre-test experimental group, 235 in the post-test experimental group, 240 in the pre-test control group, and 244 in the post-test control groups, with the convenience sampling. The study period was from Feb 2007 to Oct 2007. Descriptive analysis, ANOVA, t-test, simple and multiple regression analyses, and logistic regression analyses were performed.
Overall, it revealed that community pharmacists’ intervention on the pharmaceutical services in the community residents (i.e., experimental groups) were shown improved medication knowledge of the public, and better perceived overall pharmaceutical service satisfaction, than those in the control groups.
This study confirmed the values contributed by the community pharmacists on community residents in terms of medication knowledge and consultation effectiveness. The model of medical-pharmacy networking deserves to diffuse further to other regions in Taiwan to benefit the medication safety of the public and promote the values of community pharmacists’ pharmaceutical functions.
