Diabetic Patients' Views on Services Provided by Community Pharmacies

Objectives The purpose of this study is to evaluate the attitude of the patients with diabetes towards and satisfaction with services provided by the community pharmacists in Tehran. Although there is no national guideline for diabetic disease management in Iran, pharmacists, as accessible and trained healthcare professionals, provide patients with consultation regarding medications, diet and physical activity. With the increasing number of patients with diabetes in Iran, it is needed to evaluate the patients' satisfaction with and attitude towards pharmacists' services to better understanding how such services can be improved. Methods Key findings This study is a cross-sectional and self-administrated survey conducted among patients with diabetes in Tehran between April and September 2016. Once finished with extracting the possible factors related to the attitudes of the patients with diabetes from existing literature, a standardised questionnaire with 35 questions was designed and distributed randomly among patients with diabetes. Four hundred and four completed questionnaires were finally returned. Although pharmacists' services such as giving advices on diabetes management, giving information to patients and educating them about diabetes self-management were found not to be implemented at an appropriate level, the majority of patients agreed that they receive consultation services from pharmacists regarding diabetes and had good attitude towards such services. More than 70% of patients agreed that, after receiving consultation services, their knowledge of diabetes increased and they have been more successful at diabetes self-management. Conclusions According to the results, patients with diabetes in this study have relatively positive views on pharmacists and their services.