DOI: 10.21276/sajp.2018.7.6.1

Pages: 208-211

A pharmacist is a professional who is dispensed medicine, counsel patient and advice health care stakeholders on the rational use of medicines. However, there are only few who approach him for counsel or advice. This could be due to ignorance or doubts in the mind of the people about the professional competencies, knowledge and skills of the pharmacists. The study is therefore an attempt to determine the awareness about pharmacy profession amongst stakeholders. A questionnaire was developed on four parameters which broadly covers the spectrum of clinical pharmacy services which a pharmacists is expected to render namely: utilization or underutilization of drug in the prescription, therapeutic duplication in the prescription, incorrect drug dosage, and drugdrug interactions. An evaluation of the responses of nurses, clinicians, pharmacist, patient and public were analysed. The results indicate that nurses, clinicians, patient and public did not agree that a pharmacist could perform the above tasks. The strongest disagreement was from the clinicians on all aspects. A comparison in between categories reveals that nurse has lower knowledge and perception as compared to clinician, public and patient.