earticle

영어

Objective: The provision of pharmaceutical care service in compliance with good pharmacy practice (GPP) standards isimportant, but there is lack of studies to investigate the barriers that significantly hinder community pharmacies inKorea from adhering to the standards. This study was aimed to identify the major barriers to provision of pharmaceuticalcare service in compliance with the proposed pharmacy practice standards which have been developed based on theGPP standards recommended jointly by WHO and FIP. Methods: Questionnaires reviewed by the expert committeewere posted for 32 days on the website which is most frequently accessed by community pharmacists. The respondentscompleted them by checking the scores (Max=5, Min=1) for major barriers to provision of pharmaceutical care servicefocusing on patient information management and drug use review process in prescription fillings. The answered scoreswere automatically collected using online data processing. Mean differences between scored data were assessed byANOVA. Results: Total 321 pharmacists participated in the survey. Results indicated that ‘difficulty of diagnosis identification’(m=3.92, SD=1.21), ‘lack of time’ (m=3.48, SD=1.22) and ‘lack of updated clinical information’ (m=3.17,SD=1.10) were the major barriers to provision of pharmaceutical care service in patient information management. Themain barriers to drug utilization review were ‘lack of time’ (m=3.32, SD=1.21), ‘lack of updated clinical information’(m=3.11, SD=1.17), and ‘negative feedbacks or refusals from prescribers’ (m=3.00, SD=1.38). There were significantdifferences among the groups by location, employed number of pharmacists and acceptability to the proposed GPP standards. Conclusion: Difficulties in managing patient clinical information and lack of time were found to be the majorbarriers in providing pharmaceutical care services in community pharmacies in Korea. Further research is recommendedto determine ways to reduce these barriers in order to provide quality pharmaceutical care service that is incompliance with the internationally recognized GPP guidelines.