Observances Telepharmacy Standards of Community Pharmacies in Thailand: A Preliminary Survey

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the observances of the Standard of Telephamacy of the Pharmacy Council of Thailand. Methods: This survey study gathered the data through an online questionnaire from 25 February to 5 March 2022 among the community pharmacists. Accidental sampling was used to sampling the participants. Descriptive statistics was used in statistical analysis. Community pharmacies' practices were compared before and after the COVID-19 pandemic using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test. Significance level was determined at p<0.05. Results: A total of 50 pharmacists responded to the survey. There are 16 drugstors (32.0%) serving the telepharmacy services after the COVID-19 outbreak. Nine drugstores (56.25%) have a pharmacist as a regular service provider. The most common practices that adhered to the telepharmacy standards were taking history on drug allergy or drug adverse reaction (n=12, 75.0%); past medication profile (n=12, 75.0%), providing information about medication list (n=12, 75.0%); drug administration (n=12, 75.0%); and warning and precautions (n=12, 75.0%). The most non-compliance to telapharmacy standards included checking patient registration with a prescription-specified facility (n=7, 43.8%), requesting permission to record audio or video during service (n=5, 31.5%) and requesting consent to access medical history (n=5, 31.5%). Conclusion: Drugstores cooperated in complying with the Standard of telepharmacy as well, but they still need to encourage some additional actions to provide safety, standardized and convenient service to customers.