Community pharmacists’ knowledge, attitude, and practice of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS): the impact of training courses

Abstract

Introduction: Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a common chronic functional gastrointestinal disorder. Pharmacists have a vital role in patient education and in drug-therapy management for IBS. This survey is the first study in Iran, to evaluate knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of community pharmacists on IBS, and the impact of training courses on the improvement of their skills.

Objective and setting: This pre- and post-cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate IBS-KAP amongst Community pharmacists in Shiraz, Iran.

Methods: Pretested questionnaires were designed to assess professional characteristics and KAP components of the community pharmacists regarding IBS. All pharmacists from Shiraz were invited to participate in a 3-day training course on IBS. The participants were requested to complete the questionnaire before commencing the training course (pre-test), at the end of the 3-days course (post-test), and also 3 months after the course (follow-up test).

Results: Correct answers to all parts increased after the training course, as well as in the follow-up stage, which was statistically significant in all three parts (P<0.05). The increases in correct answers were seen in the fields of attitude, practice, and knowledge.

Conclusion: It seems that continuing IBS training courses are essential for pharmacists, regarding the fact that they can play an important role in assisting patients with IBS, as they are easily accessible healthcare professionals.

Keywords:

• attitude
• practice
• knowledge
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• pharmacist

Acknowledgments

This work was a part of a Pharm.D thesis (Number 587) written by Hamed Dehghanpour and was supported by the Research Council of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.

Disclosure

The author reports no conflicts of interest in this work.

Supplementary material

Dear participant

This survey is based on research that is supervized by clinical pharmacists of Shiraz University of Medical Science and is about irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Please read carefully the following questions. Choose correct answers (one or more than one) to the multiple choice questions.

We would appreciate your participation in our survey that will help us to identify and modify the weak and strong points related to our study.

All the information that will be collected by this survey will be confidential, and only the relevant information will be used for the graduation project.

Thank you for your active participation.

Demographic data:

Age:

Sex:

Job experience: Less than 5 years 5–10 years 10–15 years >15 years

Did you ever have training regarding IBS?

1- Only teaching classes during university

2- Less than 5 hours of special training after graduation

3- More than 5 hours of special training after graduation

Do you think you need any special training courses regarding IBS?

1- I need special education to improve my knowledge about IBS

2- I know all the details about this disease and don’t need any more training courses

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