Improving community pharmacists' clinical knowledge to detect and resolve drug-related problems in Croatia: a before/after survey study investigating the efficacy of an educational intervention.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to increase the knowledge level of community pharmacists in Croatia to identify and resolve drug-related problems (DRPs).

DESIGN

Before/after survey study.

SETTING

University of Split School of Medicine.

PARTICIPANTS

115 community pharmacists from all over the Croatia.

INTERVENTIONS

An interactive 3-day clinical pharmacy workshop with the goal of increasing the knowledge level of community pharmacists in Croatia to identify and resolve DRPs in routine practice. Teaching methods were based on interactive clinical case solving.

OUTCOME MEASURE

Change of the community pharmacists' knowledge based on preworkshop and postworkshop evaluation. A survey-based clinical knowledge measurement tool was used in order to evaluate the efficacy of the workshop. The lowest possible total score was 0 and the highest was 80. A higher survey score indicates a higher level of clinical knowledge to identify and resolve DRPs.

RESULTS

Participating pharmacists had significantly higher postworkshop mean survey score (49.1±8.0) than the preworkshop mean survey score (42.9±8.2), with the mean score difference of 6.2 (95% CI 4.3 to 8.1). Furthermore, it was found that community pharmacists significantly increased their survey scores, regardless of their age.

CONCLUSIONS

Interactive and case-based clinical pharmacy workshop could be a valuable tool to increase the knowledge of community pharmacists about identification and management of DRPs in routine practice. However, further studies are necessary to evaluate the long-term knowledge maintenance and the improvement in patients' clinical outcomes.