Open AccessCommunity Pharmacists’ Perception of the Relevance of Drug Package Insert as Source of Drug Information in Southwestern Nigeria
Author(s) -
Kenechuckwu Diobi,
Titilayo O. Fakeye,
Rasaq Adisa
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
tropical journal of pharmaceutical research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.209
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1596-5996
pISSN - 1596-9827
DOI - 10.4314/tjpr.v12i3.25
Subject(s) - package insert , descriptive statistics , test (biology) , medicine , drug , relevance (law) , family medicine , information source (mathematics) , perception , pharmacist , medical education , psychology , pharmacy , pharmacology , statistics , political science , paleontology , mathematics , neuroscience , law , biology
Purpose: To evaluate the opinions of community pharmacists on the usefulness and reliability of drug package inserts (DPI) as drug information source, and necessary modifications needed to improve theircontents.Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study using a pretested questionnaire was administered to sixty-one superintendent community pharmacists (CP) across two cities in southwestern Nigeria. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize the data and evaluate respondents’ opinion. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to evaluate the rank variables with p < 0.05 considered significant.Results: A majority of CP believed that information from DPI was precise and may be helpful in achieving therapeutic success (n = 42; 72.8 %). CP believed there is need for the modification of DPI content with respect to patient-related information (n = 52; 92.8 %) and health provider-relatedinformation (n = 52; 94.5%), non-uniformity of information on the same generic medicines (n = 31; 50.8 %), and ambiguity of content (n = 29; 47.5 %). Years of experience in practice significantly influenced respondents’ perception of precision and satisfaction with DPI as source of information.Conclusions: Community pharmacists in southwestern Nigeria believed that a properly modified drug package insert could be a useful and reliable source of drug information in daily practice.Keywords: Community pharmacist, Drug information, Drug package insert