KEY WORDS: Outpatient care services, Patients Satisfaction, Pharmacy care.
INTRODUCTION
Patients’ satisfaction is an integral component of the quality of healthcare and it has been adopted as a proxy to assess the quality and improve the sustainability of healthcare services in many countries1 . Worldwide, patients’ satisfaction with pharmacy services reflects the extent to which their expectations, concerns and preferences are met2-4 . The measurement of satisfaction will help to identify pharmacy services in need of improvement, enhance patients’ adherence to their medications and to provide a positive impact on patient health outcomes5-7
Ambulatory or outpatient pharmacy practice is an integral part of the healthcare system that provides pharmaceutical care to the patients who are not admitted to the hospital. Ambulatory care pharmacists have the responsibility to improve the patient’s knowledge about the proper use of medicines, assess the patient’s need of medication, manage the patient’s medication-related problems and develop a relationship with the patients and their families8 .
In Saudi Arabia, the General Administration of pharmaceutical care at the Ministry of Health (MOH) published a strategic plan in 2012 for five years, and one of the dimensions of follow-up assessment was patient satisfaction with pharmacy services9 . In such context, patient satisfaction survey had been conducted at more than 250 hospital pharmacies and 2500 primary care center pharmacies in Saudi Arabia (KSA)10 . The survey was constructed based on several indicators such as law domains, policy domains, medication safety domains, patient outcome domains, and customer needs domains10 .
Some previous studies have reported on patient satisfaction of pharmaceutical care in terms of evaluating performance of outpatient services in primary care centers11 , tertiary care hospitals in Riyadh city 201912 and the Northern area13 , specialized hospitals in Jeddah city14 , the Eastern region15 and pharmacy care services in East Province8 . These studies concluded that the patient satisfaction of pharmacy services was adequate at MOH hospital overall. The outcomes showed a lack in pharmacists’ interaction with patients and exertions, medication reconciliation, medication adherence, and pharmacy communication domains which require more focus and improvement by pharmacists. A study recommended conducting training courses to improve staff skills and attitudes to deal with patients14 .
A recent study on 746 patients attending outpatient pharmacies at public hospital at Al-Jouf region of Northern KSA concluded a low satisfaction level of patients with regards to pharmacy facilities and patient‘s counseling 13 . A variety of factors might be involved in patients’ satisfaction process including but not limited to services accessibility, waiting time, availability of medications, and pharmacy staff attitude in providing medication information and counseling14,16 .
To the best of our knowledge, there is no study that evaluated patient satisfaction of outpatient care services at the Northwestern area of the KSA. This study focused on exploring the level of satisfaction among patients attending outpatient pharmacies of two tertiary care hospitals in Tabuk city.
METHODS