الفهرس 
Community pharmacy and pharmaceutical careOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
After the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report was released in November 1999, To Err Is Human, Patient safety had become a significant concern. The report showed that medication errors are responsible for the deaths of as many as 7,000 Americans annually, which financial burden of medication-related morbidity and mortality will value almost $77 billion yearly.
This study was done to measure patient safety culture among pharmacists working in community pharmacies in center and south of Cairo and to identify factors affecting patient safety culture.
A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted by using convenience sample in community pharmacies in the center and south areas of Cairo to evaluate patient safety culture among pharmacists using Pharmacy Survey on Patient Safety Culture (PSOPSC) established by AHRQ (The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). The sample size calculated was 210 based on the results of a previous similar study in Kuwait. The response rate was 95.2%.
The Pharmacy Survey on Patient Safety Culture (PSOPSC) involves 36 items that measure 11 composites of organizational culture concerning patient safety. Six composites measure perception and five measure practices. In addition, the survey also includes 3 items about the frequency of documenting different types of mistakes, in addition, respondents are asked to provide an overall rating on patient safety. Respondents are also asked to provide limited background demographic information and a section for open- ended comments. The mean age of the participants ranged between 22 and 48 years and (26%) of them were acting as pharmacy manager.
In this study the overall mean of positive response percent (PRP) for patient safety culture was (57.4%) based on the PSOPSC scale.
The top three PRP of composites were for teamwork (68.97%), organization learning-continuous improvement (64.93%), and patient counselling (61.83%). This reflects that learning culture is present among practicing pharmacists to develop the services which improve the safety of patients.
The PRP was less than 60% in communication openness (56.90%), response to mistakes (55.33%), communication about mistakes (55.30%), the overall perceptions of patient safety (52.13%) and communication about prescriptions across shifts (49.87%). These findings identified communication as an important area for improvement in community pharmacy. The lowest PRR was given to the “staffing, work pressure, and pace “domain which scored (34.98%).
Regarding the overall perception of patient safety; two thirds of the pharmacists reported that their pharmacies focus more on patient safety versus one third reported that their pharmacies focused more on sales, while 58.7% reported that their pharmacy are good in preventing mistakes.
This work also studied the Practices of documenting mistakes among community pharmacies through three items; how often they document; 1) a mistake reaches the patient and could cause harm but does not, 2) a mistake reaches the patient but has no potential to harm the patient, and 3) a mistake that could have harmed the patient is corrected before the medication leaves the pharmacy. The response was positive in (39.4%), (42.6%), and (52. 26%) respectively.
In the current study, the age affected both perception and practices of pharmacists working in community pharmacies. The PRP increased as the age increased in eight out of eleven patient safety composites. Also, the PRP increased as the years of experience increased in two out of the eleven patient safety composites. Manager pharmacists have higher overall perception on patient safety and higher score in the practices of documenting mistakes.
This study highlighted the future needs to stress on patient safety issues in community pharmacies. Staffing, work pressure and pace is an international weak area in community pharmacies that need international collaborative effort to study and find out applicable solutions that suit variant cultures with different economic status. Work environment should be made safer to allow pharmacists to do their work correctly without threatening patient safety. The pharmacies should be managed by senior well- experienced pharmacist. Effective communication is important to minimize problems related to drug prescription.