Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to generate valuable data about overall dispensing practices available at the later settings in one of the largest town in Ethiopia; Ambo town. Descriptive cross sectional study was conducted at 15 community pharmacy settings found in the town from April to June 2014 including 255 clients. Dispensing practices were evaluated using WHO standards for dispensing. Data was analyzed using SPSS Version 20.0. Out of 18 dispensers working at these settings, only 3(17%) were pharmacists and surprisingly 5(27.8 %) were not professionally qualified (without having any college diploma or university degree). The average dispensing time obtained was 60 seconds. From the total of 225 clients visiting these settings, only 17 (7.6%) of them were found to be knowledgeable about drugs dispensed to them. Regarding adequacy of labeling, generic name, strength, dosage, and quantity of drugs were written on only 11.1%, 11.1%, 29.8% and 11.6% of the labels respectively. It was found that for more 90% of the clients, drugs were dispensed without checking patients’ identity like age. While for 6.7% wrong strength, 12% incorrect frequency and 24.4% incorrect total quantity were dispensed. Only dispensing spoon was available as dispensing aids at all settings. None of them were found to check the temperature of the refrigerator regularly & maintained with acceptable range. Generally, dispensing practices found at these pharmacy settings were mostly irrational. This could be ensured through the involvement of non-pharmacy professionals in dispensing, very short dispensing time, poor clients’ knowledge, poor labeling of medications, significant number of dispensing errors and unavailability of essential dispensing aids. So there is a need for urgent managerial and educational intervention to improve dispensing practices in the country and in the study area particularly.
