title: The importance that community pharmacists in Malta place on the introduction of pharmaceutical care.
abstract: The results from a study to assess the importance Maltese pharmacists placed on various aspects of pharmaceutical care and their willingness to provide such care are reported. A modified version of the Behavioural Pharmaceutical Care Scale (BPCS) questionnaire (consisting of three dimensions and 14 domains) was mailed to the 198 privately owned community pharmacies in Malta. A total of 99 questionnaires were returned following two reminder telephone calls. Pharmacists were asked to score the importance of each pharmaceutical care activity contained in the modified BPCS on a 6 point Likert scale ranging from 0 to 5. The overall score for the questionnaire, which illustrated the importance pharmacists attributed to various aspects of pharmaceutical care, ranged from 90 to 170 with a mean score of 134.8. There was little difference recorded between the scores for the three dimensions. The Referral and Consultation domain recorded a slightly higher score than the other two domains. Younger pharmacists obtained significantly higher scores (p < 0.05; Kruskal-Wallis test) in the Verification of Patient Understanding domain. Approximately 72% of respondents indicated that they were willing to provide pharmaceutical care, but remarked that a number of issues e.g. reimbursement, qualified support staff, GP-pharmacist co-operation, had to be addressed. A series of strategic steps are needed to help pharmacists resolve these issues before pharmaceutical care programmes could be offered by Maltese community pharmacists.
authors.affiliation: Pharmacy Practice Research Group, School of Pharmacy, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cordina
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: McElnay
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Hughes
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D003157:Community Pharmacy Services / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008319:Malta; D005791:Patient Care / Q000592:standards*; D010594:Pharmacies / Q000592:standards*; D012017:Referral and Consultation / Q000592:standards*; D012737:Sex Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires