일반인들의 지역약국 약사서비스에 대한 기대: 설문조사

A Survey of the General Publics’ Perceptions and Expectations for Community Pharmacy Services

OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to investigate the purpose of pharmacy visit, service satisfaction, and the expected services from community pharmacy. METHODS Twenty eight-items questionnaire verified through a pilot test was used. Adults over the age of 20 were enrolled by convenience sampling during July 17 to 24, 2017. The data were analyzed descriptively by using Microsoft Excel program. RESULTS Of 119 respondents, about two thirds were younger than 40, educated above college, and lived in Seoul and Incheon/Gyeonggi. During the last 3 months, 70.5% and 66.4% of respondents visited community pharmacy for prescription drug dispensing and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs purchasing, while only 16.8% and 3.4% of them visited for health functional food (HFF) purchasing and health promotion counseling (HPC). The main reason of low HPC service uses was lack of awareness about its availability in community pharmacy. They were highly satisfied with pharmacy services for prescription drug, OTC, HFF, and HPC (92.8%, 86.1%, 90.0%, and 100.0%), respectively. Their expected services from community pharmacy were the management of safe drug use, sufficient provision of product information, support for selecting products, and counseling for general health-related problems. CONCLUSION This study suggests that community pharmacy should actively let the general publics know diverse pharmacy services and strengthen pharmacist’s roles in primary care. The value of community pharmacy will be enhanced by satisfactorily providing the services expected by general publics.