Introduction

Perceptions of community pharmacy services in Portugal have been studied from the users' perspective, throughout a previous qualitative research. Some of the resultant concepts were submitted to a quantitative evaluation.

Aims

To study relations between demographic variables and previously explored community pharmacy users perceptions, such as, aspects of pharmacy and pharmacists utilization.

To quantify these concepts at a national level.

Materials and Methods

An ONSA (national health observatory) instrument was used, the ECOS sample. This consists of a national representative sample of household units with phone. General demographics and specific data on community pharmacy and pharmacists perceptions were collected by telephone interviews.

Results and Discussion

From a total of 1417 respondents, 64.5% were female, with a mean age of 52.9 years. One third of the sample (36.3%) had a low degree of literacy (primary school) whilst 47.3% were economically active. Participants were questioned about prevalent chronic diseases (asthma 4.7%; COAD 4.9%; arthritis 19.6%; hypertension 14.5%; diabetes 6.4%). Based on responses to these disease item categories, 31.9% of the respondents were identified as probable chronic prescription drug users. Logistic regression showed age, socioeconomic status and sex were significant indicators for being a chronic drug user (likelihood ratio 1554.9, p<0.001). One third (33.9%) of the respondents indicated that they do not talk with the person who is dispensing prescription drugs. Proportions of both prescription and non-prescription users expressed opinions of the pharmacist as business oriented, rather than a health care professional (28.5% and 25.5%, respectively). A large majority of the participants (73.7%) would like pharmacists to participate in their treatment decisions. More negatively, 55.1% did not seem able to distinguish between pharmacists and non-pharmacist technical staff in community pharmacies.

Conclusions

Preliminary results show that some of the concepts emerged during the qualitative phase of the study are indeed representing the national population believes and behaviours. This is a matter for professional and educational bodies to take into account in the near future.