Assessment of Patients’ Perspective on Quality of Pharmacist Patient Communication in a Nigerian Tertiary Hospital

Background The current practice paradigm of pharmacists is patient-focused and communication plays a vital role in the effectiveness of its delivery. In view of the common errors frequently committed by pharmacists in communication, this study assessed the quality of communications between hospital pharmacists and patients accessing care at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Ogun State, Nigeria. Methodology This cross-sectional study was conducted among patients accessing healthcare services at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Ogun State, Nigeria. A validated questionnaire was used to obtain relevant data among 159 respondents. These data were processed with SPSS (version 25.0) using descriptive statistics to summarize continuous variables and Chi-square statistic to determine associations between categorical variables. Result The study shows that 32.1% of the patients were young adults within 35-44 years age group and 62.9%werefemale. Also, 64.2% of the respondents resided in urban areas and 54.7% had post-secondary education. The study further shows that 29.6% and 28.3% respectively used Consultant Out-Patient and General Out-Patient satellite pharmacies. The study also shows that 86.2% of the respondents submitted that pharmacist's explanations were easy to understand while 83.6% respectively agreed that pharmacist's communication positively impacted their satisfaction and pharmacist's communication style influenced their perception of hospital's quality. Furthermore, 83.7% of patients felt confident that pharmacist's advice improved their health outcomes while 68.6% perceived the quality of pharmacist-patient communication as average. The pharmacy satellite (c ² = 40.1, p<0.01) where respondents procured medication had a significant association with respondent’s perception of the quality of pharmacist-patient communication. Conclusion Pharmacist’s communication positively influenced hospital's quality perception by patients with their perception significantly associated to pharmacy satellite where respondents procured medication.