European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

PHARMACEUTICAL CARE SERVICES DELIVERY AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE OF COMMUNITY PHARMACIES IN PORT HARCOURT, RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA

Alagala, M. B. PhD* and Bagbi, B. M. Pharm. D

ABSTRACT

Background: Pharmaceutical care concept has become a dominant form of practice for pharmacists globally after its emergence over two decades ago and this philosophy of practice has seen the birth of a new paradigm that has reoriented pharmacy practice from a product oriented one to an outcome oriented practice that is patient centered where pharmacists take responsibilities in a collaborative manner to improve patients‟ quality of life. Objective: The specific objectives include to determine if any relationship exist between medications therapy management, patient education/counseling, ethical dispensing practice and three proxies of business performance namely- sale turnover, profitability and customer loyalty. Methods: Cross sectional survey design was adopted for this study. Out of a population of 304 community pharmacies in Port Harcourt, a sample size of 173 community Pharmacies was determined using the Taro Yamane formula with a sampling error of 0.05. A well-designed questionnaire was drafted and administered on respondents who are superintendent pharmacists of the randomly selected pharmacies and 1,384 patients who are customers to the pharmacies. Spearman rank correlation was used to show the strength of relationship between the dimensions and measures of the predictor and criterion variables of the study. Results: The study shows that there is a positive correlation between the patient education /counselling, and customer satisfaction, sales turnover and profitability with r values of +0.9532, +0.9532 and +0.9156 respectively at p<0.05. The correlation(r) between patient counselling ethical dispensing practice and customer satisfaction, sales turnover and profitability are +0.9999, +0.936 and 0.9883 (p<0.050) respectively while a strong correlation was also obtained between medication therapy management and customer satisfaction, sales turnover and profitability with r values of +0.9702, +0.9717 and +0.9527 (p<0.05) respectively. Conclussion: This study shows that there is strong relationship between the practice of pharmaceutical care by community pharmacies and their business performance.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical care, Business success, Customer satisfaction, Sales turnover and Profitability.