Motivation and Obstacles in Enrolling to the Community Pharmacy Accreditation (CPA)

Abstract

Abstract

Introduction: Although the quality of care in general community pharmacy is increasingly considered, the numbers of enrollment to become standard community pharmacy are not well correlated.  This cross-sectional study was therefore aimed to determine the motivation and obstacles that affected the pharmaceutical entrepreneurs to enroll in community pharmacy accreditation (CPA).  Materials and Methods: The subjects were 360 community pharmacy entrepreneurs in the Northeast of Thailand who did not joined the CPA program.  The data were collected using self-administered questionnaires which were distributed to subjects by post during July to November 2012.  Results: There were 341 correspondents (94.7 percent).  The results showed that 322 (94.4 percent) and 335 (98.2 percent) of the correspondents knew about the standard of community pharmacy and the CPA, respectively.  Moreover, 310 subjects (90.9 percent) agreed to the concept of CPA.  The motivations that highly affected the pharmacy entrepreneurs’ decision to enroll the CPA were the willing to improve services with mean score of 4.93 (total score of 5), followed by knowledge and the customers’ well-being with mean score of 4.61, the law enforcement with mean score of 4.0, the primary care development with mean score of 3.59, and the pharmacy competition with mean score of 3.23, respectively.  However, the most important obstacles to enroll in this project were from standard 1 location, equipment, and services with mean score of 4.8 (total score of 5), standard 2 the management with mean score of 4.7, standard 3 good pharmacy practice with mean score of 4.5, standard 5 community’s service together with participation with mean score of 2.1 and standard 4 regulations and moral practice with mean score of 2.0, respectively.  Moreover, the results also revealed that age, sex, education, the pharmacy display, membership in professional council, number of customers had no significant difference in affecting the entrepreneurs’ motivation and obstacles to enroll in community pharmacy accreditation (p-value 0.05).  Conclusion: These findings indicated that though the community pharmacy had positive motivations about CPA, the major barriers in each standard still existed.  Thus, modifications or promoting some aspects of each standard should be taken into account.