4,13
This study demonstrated low satisfaction rating (2.73) with the service of follow-up of patients’ adherence by the pharmacists. This service is not supported at the majority of hospitals and pharmacies. In fact, the average patients’ satisfaction rating of this service was very low (1.75) in three hospitals in Riyadh city12 .
Waiting time is one of the fundamental contributors to patient satisfaction. In the current study patients reported very good satisfaction with waiting time and waiting area and pharmacy location in both hospitals. The waiting time was found to be acceptable as most of the patients preferred to get their medications in less than 30 min. Waiting time domain was found to be significant among the three tertiary care hospitals in Riyadh city, which is related to the differences in the distribution of the organization system and the number of pharmacy staff at each of these hospitals12 . Waiting time was the only predictor of satisfaction among patients attending emergency care center in Riyadh city16 .
The results regarding the satisfaction with pharmacist’s attitude and patient relationship were very good, and were a bit higher than those reported in tertiary care hospitals in Riyadh city12 . It was similar to those reported in a national study conducted in the primary healthcare centers11 .
High satisfaction was reported in the area of medication reconciliation. Our results were higher than other previous studies11,12 . The results on pharmacy location, waiting area and waiting time were found to be good as reported in the literature.
This study has some limitations. The study design was cross-sectional study over a short duration of time with limited number of study sites which may affect the drawn conclusion as respondents’ beliefs and perceptions are dynamic and based on exposure to the pharmacy services. In this context, the response might be based on the respondent’s experience with regard to their frequent visits and the reception of outpatient pharmacy services. The study did not explore factors affecting the respondents’ response. However, the majority of respondents reported high satisfaction to all domains of pharmacy services which did not necessitate for further investigations of the reasons.
In conclusion, the current study demonstrated overall very good satisfaction scores with the outpatient pharmacy services. More efforts are needed to improve the service of following-up on patients’ adherence by the pharmacists. Most of the respondents expressed their willingness to recommend the pharmacy to their friends and family. Our results were found to be better than those reported in the literature in many domains. Notably, the result implicates the professionalism and attitude adopted by the pharmacists towards the respondents which resembles from the high satisfaction level of the respondents.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Assistance of Pharm D students, Salah Rashed Almrwani, Abdulrahem Mataq Aljuhani, Abdulrahman Majed Alanzi, and Abdullah Nasser Albalawi in the data collection for this study is gratefully acknowledged.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST . The authors declare there is no conflict of interest.
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Table 1: Participants’ baseline characteristics