Revista de Cuidados Farmacêuticos e Sistemas de Saúde
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A Qualitative Review of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of Clinical Pharmacy Services Provided by Tirunesh Beijing General Hospital

Gebremariam ET* and Mekuria B

Background: Clinical pharmacy services are patient oriented services developed to promote the rational use of medicines by maximizing therapeutic effect of medicines in individual patients. It has a positive impact on medical, economic and humanistic outcomes of the patients. In Ethiopia, the service is at its infant stage and there is lack of objective evidence on the strength, weakness, opportunity and threats. Therefore, the aim of this study was to undergo situational analysis of clinical pharmacy services in Tirunesh Beijing General Hospital using SWOT frame work.

Methods: A qualitative study was conducted in Tirunesh Beijing General Hospital from March 1 to March 14, 2016. An in-depth interview with flexible probing techniques was designed to collect the data from twenty key informants. A semi structured interview guide was prepared to explore ideas of key informants about situation of clinical pharmacy service, internal factors (strength & weakness), and external factors (opportunity & threats). A thematic analysis was then used to analyze the data.

Results: Internal factors such as presence of clinical pharmacists in the hospital and interest & willingness of the managers to support and give assistance to the services were found as the major strengths, while lack of adequate facilities & equipment; poor performance of clinical pharmacists in implementing the service; poor collaboration working relationship between the pharmacists and physicians and weak evaluation mechanism of the hospital management were found as the major weaknesses. External factors such as increasing number of graduating clinical pharmacists from different colleges and universities and availability of post graduate program in clinical pharmacy in the country were identified as opportunity. However, low coverage of promotion about the service by the responsible body was mentioned as threat for the hospital.

Conclusion: The study identified that clinical pharmacy services had a lot of limitations as compared to its strengths in the hospital. It is recommended that the hospital should expand and implement the service in all wards and facilitate experience sharing programs with other model hospitals in clinical pharmacy to strength the service.