Alemayehu Berhane, Elias Ali , Peggy Odegard, Sultan Suleman
Physicians’ acceptance of clinical pharmacists’ services depends on the physicians’ perception of the pharmacist’s competence. Clinical pharmacists should understand what physicians expect of them and how receptive physicians are to the contributions that pharmacists seek to make to patients' pharmaceutical care. The objective of this study was thus, to assess physicians’ expectations of clinical pharmacists’ roles in Jimma University Specialized Hospital, Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study design was conducted using self administered questionnaire. Questionnaires were distributed to 169 random sample of physicians. A set of statements of physicians’ expectations of clinical pharmacists’ roles for which respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement using a 3 point level Likert scale as agree, neutral and disagree. Data were enetered to SPSS version 16. The results for each item on the questionnaire were reported as percentage and 95% confidence interval. Statistical significance was accepted at P value of < 0.05. Of the total 169 physicians, 147 responded giving a response rate of 87%. The majority of physicians 132(89.8%) were in the age range of 20-30 years. Of all the 147 respondents, 127 (86.4%) were males. With regard to physician’s year of practice, majority of the respondents 145(98.6%) had 1-10 years of experience. A total of 99(67.3%) respondents were medical interns. For all items measuring physicians’ expectation, the mean response is between 1 and 2. The majority of physicians 129(87.8%) expected clinical pharmacists to be knowledgeable drug therapy experts with a mean ± SD (1.17±0.49) and 125(85%) to educate patients about the safe and appropriate use o majority of physicians were receptive to clinical pharmacists undertaking many of the activities suggested to them. We can recommend that implementation of clinical pharmacy practice is feasible in such resource constrained setups.
