Eyes play an essential role in a person’s life, so eye health must be maintained because damage or irritation to the eyes will interfere with daily activities. Eye health can be disturbed, ranging from mild to severe, resulting in blindness and causing limitations in daily activities and the patient’s quality of life. However, blindness and visual impairment can be prevented if treated early and immediately. For this reason, a health check when the eyes are sore, establishing a diagnosis, and administering the right eye drops will prevent the condition of eye pain from getting worse. When a patient receives treatment at an Eye Clinic, for example, the role of the health system shifts from ophthalmologists to the pharmacist, who ensures that the drug is according to the indications with the optimal dose and the correct way to use and is aware of the potential side effects of the drug. The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) recommends that the topic of counseling be directed at the indications, how to use it and be aware of the potential side effects of eye drugs to obtain optimal therapeutic effects. The role of the pharmacist here is as the last line of the health system before the patient consumes the drug. In this position in the health system, the pharmacist’s ability and experience in conducting drug counseling greatly influence the patient’s knowledge of using the drug. However, what is no less important in the counseling process is patient satisfaction with the personal pharmacist who provides counseling. Pharmacist communication skills are fundamental technical skills needed for the drug administration process, and this is very important to get satisfactory advice that encourages patients to use drugs rationally.
The role of pharmacists in eye drop counseling is crucial, so a study to obtain the results of pharmacist counseling working in the Eye Clinic related to patient knowledge about eye drugs and patient satisfaction with counseling performance needs to be conducted. Studies like this are necessary as feedback to improve the performance of pharmacists in the Eye Clinic professionally and continuously.
A cross-sectional study was conducted for one month, and patients were interviewed using a questionnaire consisting of 15 questions to assess patient knowledge. Patients. The level of knowledge is classified as high if the patient is able to answer >10 questions correctly, moderate if able to answer 6-9 questions correctly, or low if only able to answer <6 questions. In addition, patients were also asked questions related to the quality of pharmacists working in the Eye Clinic in the counseling process. There are three questions, namely: whether the pharmacist gives clear instructions on the use of eye drops, whether the pharmacist’s voice and intonation are clear, and whether the pharmacist is polite when providing counseling. For this, patients were asked to assess whether the three things were in the low, sufficient, good or outstanding category. This study involved a total of 80 patients. The study showed that patients with high, moderate, or low levels of knowledge were represented by 33 (41.25%), 45 (56.25%), and 2 (2.5%) patients, respectively. Demographic characteristics (gender and education level) did not affect patient knowledge of eye medication (p>0.05). Knowledge of potential side effects of eye medication was the least understood. There needs to be an improvement in the performance of pharmacist counseling because most patients have moderate to low knowledge of eye medication. However, satisfactory results were obtained from patient assessments of the way pharmacists delivered material during the counseling process, where the three factors measured showed that patients rated it as good and very good.
Author: Rozalina Loebis
Link:
https://pharmacyeducation.fip.org/pharmacyeducation/article/view/2818
