Knowledge and attitude of health care professional’s towards clinical pharmacy services in Nedjo General Hospital, Western Ethiopia
<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Clinical pharmacy service (CPS) is an expanding patient-oriented, hospital role with the potential for encroachment on the physician's role. In large part, the success of CPS will depend on the degree to which other health professionals accept the concept and are willing to cooperate with its disciples. Unfortunately, our information about the degree of knowledge regarding acceptance and reaction toward clinical pharmacy by other health workers is meager.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> A cross sectional study design was carried out by using self–administered questionnaires on 110 health care professionals (HCP) in Nedjo General Hospital 10th March to 10th April, 2018.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results:</strong> From the total respondents 91 (82.7%) were males and majority of them were nurses 46 (41.8%) followed by midwifes 23 (20.9%). This study showed that 67 (60.9%) of the HCPs had a good knowledge and 67.3% of the HCPs had a positive attitude about CPS. There was no significant difference between the HCPs knowledge of clinical pharmacy services in relation to their sex (p=0.744), age (p=0.313), profession (p=0.997), level of education (p=0.509), and experience (p=0.553). Regarding HCPs’ attitude of CPs role, there was no significant difference in relation to their sex (p=0.588), age (p=0.144), profession (p=0.059) and experience (p=0.394). However, the study revealed that there was a significant difference (p=0.009) between HCPs attitude and level education of HCPs.</p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Majority of the HCPs had a good knowledge and a positive attitude towards CPS. Attention should focus to hospitals to implement ward based CPS and increasing inter-professional relationships between HCPs and pharmacists. </p>