MINIMAL CONSULTATION PROVIDED TO
PATIENTS PRESENTING SYMPTOMS IN THE
ROMANIAN COMMUNITY PHARMACY.
DIANA SIMONA NEGRU1*, AURELIA NICOLETA CRISTEA1, ANA
MARIA PETCULESCU2
1Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of
Pharmacy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila”,
Bucharest, Romania;
2Marketing Department, SC SIEPCOFAR SA, Bucharest, Romania
* corresponding author: di_negru@yahoo.com
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Abstract:

A community pharmacist may release over-the-counter (OTC) medication based either on a direct request coming from the patient, or as a first line therapy that succeeds a minimal consultation, when a patient showing symptoms requests advice from the pharmacist.
In the study, researchers used the covert “mystery customer” method to quantitatively measure the pharmacist’s involvement in minimal consultation and counseling of patients showing symptoms.
All the ninety nine pharmacists visited by “mystery customers” made therapeutic recommendations. The average of pharmacists’ grades (on a scale from 0 to 5) was as low as 2.06 (± 0.84). Although 57.6% pharmacists counseled the patients about drugs’ use, much fewer asked additional – but relevant – questions, like “since when did the symptoms start?” - 6.1% or “what is the currently taken medication?” – 12.1%. In-depth details about symptoms were requested in only 30.3% of the visits. The differences in minimal consultation and counseling performances are statistically significant (p < 0.05, Kruskall- Wallis) and were further tested by Mann-Whitney U pair tests (applied to each pair of evaluation criteria). The main conclusion of this research was that Romanian community pharmacists should approach more profoundly the minimal consultation in pharmacy and need additional training in order to.

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