Patient Satisfaction with Antituberculosis Medication Counselling: A Comparison of Services Provided by Pharmacists and Nurses

Background and Objective: The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) is a provincial organization responsible for managing all aspects of tuberculosis control. The centre houses its own pharmacy, which gives pharmacists the opportunity to interact directly with patients. Evaluating patient satisfaction is an important method of measuring the quality of pharmaceutical services. A questionnaire was developed to measure patient satisfaction with counselling on antituberculosis medication and to compare rates of satisfaction with services provided by nurses and pharmacists. Methods: The VSQ-9 (a visit-specific satisfaction instrument developed by RAND Health Surveys, Santa Monica, California) was modified to focus on medication counselling. Each patient received medication counselling from a pharmacist or a nurse and was asked to rate his or her satisfaction with the counselling; ratings for pharmacists and nurses were compared. Patients' knowledge about their medications was also determined. Results: Overall satisfaction with counselling by pharmacists and nurses was similar (mean +/- standard deviation: 4.2 +/- 0.68 and 4.3 +/- 0.73, respectively; maximum score 5; p = 0.48). Mean assessments of patients' knowledge were similar for patients counselled by pharmacists and those counselled by nurses (4.7 +/- 0.56 and 4.8 +/- 0.49, respectively; p = 0.48). Patients indicated greater satisfaction with explanations of medication side effects provided by pharmacists than those provided by nurses (4.3 +/- 0.69 and 4.1 +/- 0.76, respectively; p = 0.18) and with the written information provided by pharmacists (4.1 +/- 0.90 and 3.7 +/- 0.84, respectively; p = 0.03). However, there was a trend toward patients receiving more assistance with management of side effects from the nurses than from pharmacists (4.4 +/- 0.75 and 4.1 +/- 0.84, respectively; p = 0.06). Conclusion: Patients' overall ratings of their satisfaction with counselling provided by pharmacists and nurses were not significantly different. The high patient satisfaction levels and the associated patient knowledge levels observed in this study illustrate the benefit of the additional counselling support provided by pharmacists. The importance of using written information as a counselling tool was demonstrated by the high level of satisfaction among patients who were counselled by pharmacists. Future directions suggested by this research include pharmacist participation in counselling patients with active tuberculosis to improve adherence with antituberculosis therapy.