Performances of community pharmacists and community pharmacies during COVID-19 outbreak: a cross-sectional study

  1. Afsaneh Sadeghinejad
  2. Naemeh Nikvarz

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Abstract

Background

Community pharmacists can play an important role in the management of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) outbreak by providing pharmaceutical care and education services. In addition to providing drug-related services, community pharmacies must take measures to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission to customers and technicians in pharmacy. Therefore, a study was designed to assess community pharmacists’ performance and community pharmacies’ preparedness during COVID-19 outbreak.

Materials & Methods

A cross-sectional study was conducted in Kerman, Iran. A 20-item checklist consisting of nine items assessing the practice of pharmacists regarding use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and education of people about routes of transmission, prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19 and eleven items evaluating the adherence of pharmacies to principles of reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in public places was used.

Results

Of 95 enrolled pharmacists, 55 (57.9%) were female and 78.9% had work experience ≤ 10 years. More than 90% of pharmacists used appropriate PPE and provided information about medications for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and routs of its transmission to the pharmacy customers. Phone consultation was done by 71.6% of pharmacists. Concerning the preparedness of pharmacies, 92% of personnel used PPE, and hand sanitizers were available in 89.5% of pharmacies. However, a clear sheet was not placed at counters in the majority of pharmacies, and home delivery services were not provided by most pharmacies.

Conclusions

The practice of most community pharmacists was acceptable. However, stricter measures should be taken to diminish the probability of COVID-19 transmission in community pharmacies.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.14.21267818: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The study was reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee of Kerman University of Medical Sciences (IR.KMU.REC.1399.193).
    Consent: All community pharmacists who gave consent to participate in the study were included.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis: SPSS version 20 was used to analyze data.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.12.14.21267818v1 on medRxiv