Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Beirut Arab University, P.O. Box: 11 5020, Beirut, Lebanon.
Nutrition and Food Sciences Department, Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
BMC Complement Med Ther. 2021 Mar 2;21(1):81. doi: 10.1186/s12906-021-03256-8.
Customers' expectations and satisfaction are critical to ensure a more effective role of the community pharmacists in promoting the safe use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). The aim of this study is to examine the perceptions and practices of customers buying their CAM products from pharmacies and explore their satisfaction with CAM-related services offered by the community pharmacists in Lebanon.
A national cross-sectional study was conducted among users of CAM (age > =18 years) who obtained their CAM from community pharmacies in Lebanon (n = 832). Within the proximity of the pharmacy, subjects were invited to complete a multi-component questionnaire. The latter consisted of four sections related to CAM: general beliefs, perception of pharmacists' role, practices, satisfaction with services offered by the pharmacists. In addition, the questionnaire included questions about sociodemographic characteristics of participants.
The majority of participants agreed to an active role of the pharmacists' in guiding CAM use, however over half of the participants (61.3%) did not agree that the pharmacist is more knowledgeable in this field than other healthcare providers. As for practices, one in two surveyed customers (47%) did not always give feedback to their pharmacists about the outcomes after using CAM, 20% did not often ask the pharmacists about the safe and effective mode of use of the products and 28.1% did not discuss their medical history. For services offered by the pharmacist, the majority of participants reported receiving good education about the CAM product (87.1%), its side effects (87.1%) and mode of use (93.4%), while significant proportions of participants reported that pharmacists were not asking questions about their medical history before dispensing CAM products (22%) nor were they providing information on CAM-drug interactions (30%).
The results of this study highlighted important gaps between the perceptions of customers and the services they received from the pharmacists about CAM use. These findings could be used by concerned stakeholders, including public health authorities and educational bodies, to develop evidence-based interventions aimed at promoting the role of pharmacists in ensuring a safe and effective CAM use Lebanon.
确保社区药剂师在促进补充和替代医学（CAM）安全使用方面发挥更有效的作用，关键在于满足客户的期望和满意度。本研究旨在检查从药店购买 CAM 产品的客户的看法和做法，并探讨他们对黎巴嫩社区药剂师提供的与 CAM 相关服务的满意度。
在黎巴嫩（n=832），对使用 CAM（年龄≥18 岁）的用户进行了一项全国性的横断面研究。在药剂店附近，邀请受试者填写一份多部分问卷。问卷由四个与 CAM 相关的部分组成：一般信念、药剂师角色的看法、实践、对药剂师提供的服务的满意度。此外，问卷还包括参与者的社会人口特征问题。
大多数参与者同意药剂师在指导 CAM 使用方面发挥积极作用，但超过一半的参与者（61.3%）认为药剂师在这一领域比其他医疗保健提供者更有知识。就实践而言，接受调查的客户中有近一半（47%）并不总是向药剂师反馈使用 CAM 后的结果，20%的人并不经常询问药剂师有关产品安全有效使用的信息，28.1%的人不讨论他们的病史。对于药剂师提供的服务，大多数参与者报告说，他们接受了关于 CAM 产品的良好教育（87.1%）、其副作用（87.1%）和使用方式（93.4%），而相当一部分参与者报告说，药剂师在配药前没有询问他们的病史（22%），也没有提供关于 CAM-药物相互作用的信息（30%）。
这项研究的结果强调了客户对 CAM 使用的看法与他们从药剂师那里获得的服务之间存在重要差距。这些发现可以为相关利益相关者（包括公共卫生当局和教育机构）提供依据，制定以证据为基础的干预措施，旨在促进药剂师在确保黎巴嫩 CAM 安全有效使用方面的作用。
