Pharmacist perceptions of patient care competency: A survey in Vietnam

Context: In order to perform effectively in professional practice, a pharmacist should demonstrate crucial competencies on delivery of patient care. Aims: To evaluate current pharmacists’ perceptions on their delivery of patient care competencies. Methods: The evaluation divided into 8 domains of competencies with 35 behavioral statements was distributed to hospital and community pharmacists. Respondents were asked to self-evaluate their competencies on a four-point Likert scale. Results: Of 207 responses returned, there were 106 hospital pharmacists and 89 community pharmacists. The mean score ranged from 2.2 to 3.5. Respondents perceived themselves as the most competent in “Drug Specific Issues” and “Provision of drug product” cluster (3.5 ± 0. 68, 3.3 ± 0.84, respectively), whereas the lowest performance was noted in “Patient Consultation” and “Evaluation of Outcomes” (2.8 ± 1.01 and 2.8 ± 0.88, respectively). Pharmacists demonstrated the best performance in the behavioral statements pertaining to the “Appropriate route is ensured” (3.6 ± 0.63). The two behaviors with the lowest performance were “Recording Consultations” (2.2 ± 1.02) and “Record of contributions” (2.7 ± 0.93). There were no statistically significant differences in the competence cluster scores in terms of types of pharmacists, sex, age, education level, years of experience (p>0.05). Conclusions: This research represents the first self-assessment of Vietnamese pharmacists in patient care practice. Areas for additional professional education which were determined include recording patient consultation, obtaining patient consent, prioritization of drug-related problems, referrals to doctors, and assessment of patient outcomes.