Study on Working of Community Pharmacies in Three Major Cities of Kerala, India

Community pharmacy is a pharmacy centre established in a community set up which meet the needs of the society for their medicinal products, healthcare items and prescription related matters including medicines most commonly used in homes. The objective of the study was to analyze various facilities and professional services provided by the community pharmacists. A prospective, observational study was carried out in randomly selected community pharmacies in urban areas of 3 major cities of Kerala for a period of 6 months. Out of 189 pharmacies that satisfied inclusion criteria majority of pharmacists were diploma holders (96.8%) who worked for more than 10 hours (79.36%) with a very less salary of less than Rs.8000 (94.18%) per month. Antibiotics were dispensed from pharmacies without prescription (89.9%) and not even a single pharmacy took measures to avoid repeated purchase of medicines including narcotics with a same prescription. Professional services provided by the pharmacists were minimal and none of the pharmacist attended continue education programme. Revision of salary, improvement in working condition and periodic continue education programmes are mandatory to uplift this profession.