Perception towards Self-Medication Practice among Community Care Setting

To identify the perception towards selfmedication practice among community pharmacists. To study the attitude of community pharmacists towards dispensing errors. To study the various factors that influencing dispensing errors among community pharmacists. To determine the various ways to minimize the dispensing errors. Methods: The cross sectional study was carried out in Chengalpattu district over 75 pharmacies were included as samples. The study was conducted for 4 months. The sample was collected from the Medical shops / Community pharmacies in urban and rural care setting in Chengalpattu district, Chennai. Results: Among that 72% of the pharmacists were males and 28% were females in this study. The overall mean age of the respondents was 29.85±8.7 years and most respondents (32%) were between 20-30 years of age. Over 35.7% respondents were D.Pharm graduates followed by B.Pharm graduates (25%) were working as a pharmacists in most of the community pharmacists. Over 25% of the pharmacists were with the experience of below 1 year followed by 20% were with the experience of 2-4 years. The average working hours of the pharmacists was 60 to 70 hours with 36% followed by 51-60 hours with 29%. Conclusion: There is a need to improve the education of community pharmacists and their teams to ensure safe dispensing practice and to investigate potential interventions, such as electronic systems, to decrease the number of errors and reduce the risk of patient. Wrong dosage form, wrong quantity, wrong strength, and wrong drug were reported as the most common types of dispensing errors in this stud