Pharmaceutical care and the use of routine diagnostic tools by community pharmacists in Ibadan, Nigeria

Purpose: To evaluate the use of routine diagnostic tools among community pharmacists in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with pre-tested questionnaire administered to 94 pharmacists in community pharmacies in Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria. Descriptive statistics was used to summarise data and categorical variables were compared with Chi-square at a significance level of p < 0.05.
Results: With a response rate of 94.7 %, the study showed that 78 (87.6 %) of the respondents use routine diagnostic tools, 48 (53.9 %) document results of routine diagnostic tests, 72 (80.9 %) make interventions on the results but only 37 (41.6 %) document the interventions made. Although all the respondents were aware of the concept of pharmaceutical care (PC), only 55.1 % of them had adequate knowledge of PC, while 93.3% were willing to undergo training to improve their knowledge on PC implementation.
Conclusion: Most community pharmacists routinely use diagnostic tools in Ibadan. However, there is need for improvement on documentation practices.