Assessment of knowledge and patient counselling on the use of self-monitoring blood pressure monitors among community pharmacists–an interventional study

Community pharmacists are usually the first port of call for patients with hypertension, based on their accessibility. They are well positioned to enhance self-care practices among patients with hypertension that refill their prescriptions regularly at their pharmacies. Assessment of their knowledge and patient counselling on the appropriate use of self-monitoring blood pressure (BP) machine is essential to establish accuracy of pharmaceutical care services offered. The knowledge and counselling practise of community pharmacists in the study site was evaluated using a semi-structured questionnaire. An educational intervention was carried out to address the gaps discovered. The pharmacists’ knowledge and counselling practise was reassessed two weeks postintervention to measure the impact of the intervention. Descriptive statistics were utilized to summarise data and inferential statistics were done with level of significance set at p < 0.05. One hundred and fifty pharmacists completed the study. Majority (138, 92.0%) of the pharmacists had 1–5 years of work experience as community pharmacists and only 17 (11.3%) had postgraduate qualification(s). Pharmacists’ knowledge on BP measurement increased significantly from 6.59 ± 2.42 preintervention to 10.39 ± 2.55 postintervention (p < 0.001) A significant increase in pharmacists’ counselling assessment from a preintervention score of 3.91 ± 2.01 to 8.86 ± 2.13 postintervention (p < 0.001) was also observed. Baseline knowledge and counselling on BP measurement were poor. Only 39 (26.0%) knew that both arms must be used during initial BP measurement for a patient and majority (121, 80.7%) could not explain the reason for taking BP on both arms. Sixty-one (40.7%) were aware that taking BP readings over clothes could affect accuracy of the reading. Only 18 (12.0%) understood the principle guiding averaging consecutive BP measurements. While majority (99, 66.0%) had less than 50% in knowledge assessment preintervention, 133 (88.7%) had ≥ 50% postintervention. Also, majority (135, 90.0%) had less than 50% in the preintervention counselling assessment but 131 (87.3%) had ≥ 50% postintervention. Gender, educational qualifications and work experience did not influence pharmacists’ knowledge and counselling on BP measurement in this study. The knowledge and counselling practise on the use of self-monitoring blood pressure was significantly enhanced by the educational intervention.