Perceptions and attitudes of community pharmacists' towards patient counseling and continuing pharmacy education programs in Iraq

The pharmacist's role in the community is currently directed towards providing drug information and patient care rather than drug compounding and dispensing. Patient counseling is an essential skill for pharmacists. So as to improve the pharmacist role in the community and enhance the patient's education and counseling skills, many continuing education programs are established. The aim of this study is to assess the perceptions and tendency of community pharmacists in Iraq regarding patients counseling and continuing pharmacists’ educational programs.A cross-sectional survey was performed on a convenience sample of community pharmacists’ from‎ different governorates of Iraq from January 2017 to April 2018. Data were collected using a pretested questionnaire ‎specifically designed from a previous study with some modification to reflect the work nature in Iraq.The majority of pharmacists gave counseling to the patients and spent from one to five minutes in order to dispense a prescription. Approximately (53%) concentrated on the dose of the drug during dispensing more than the duration of use (19%) or drug indication (21%) while approximately half of the patients, on the other hand, asked mainly on the indications of their medications also less than (32%) asked about drug dose. Almost (47%) of participants indicated that attending continuous pharmacist education programs can help them to improve the counseling practice furthermore, the majority of them have an optimistic attitude toward the importance of these programs for the future of their career. Most participants declared that these programs are very rare in Iraq. This study provided a clue that the majority of community pharmacists in Iraq had an optimistic perception towards patients counseling and continuing pharmacy education programs.