Журнал биомедицинских и фармацевтических наук

Development and Validation of an Instrument to Enhance the Community Pharmacy Practitioner’s Knowledge towards Handling of High Risk/Alert Medications

Abstract

Balakeshwa Ramaiah, Sejal Sharma, Saroj Poudel and Raju Koneri

Aim: Medication errors may not occur more often with high-risk drugs, but the consequences or impacts from them could be more dangerous for the patients. This study was aimed to prepare and validate an instrument as learning modules to boost community pharmacists’ knowledge on High-risk Medications (HRM), which will help in minimizing serious consequences arising due to mishandling of HRM.

Methods: The instrument (videos) included chapters “introduction to HRM,” “Look Alike and Sound Alike (LASA) drugs” and “storage and labeling of HRM.” The instrument was ensured to be imperative, relevant, reactive and appropriate with the help of content and face validation which was then confirmed to be sensitive enough to distinguish knowledge levels of community pharmacists. The split-half reliability test by Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR 20) to obtain a homogenous reliability index value ensured internal consistency of the instrument.

Results: The five-points Likert scale showed an average score of above four points with Content Validity Index (CVI) for I-CVI as 0.913 and for S-CVI as 0.916. This indicated appropriateness, conciseness, and importance of the training materials. During face validation, the approval of the design of the learning modules was done, and the importance of the issues to the community pharmacy profession was thus emphasized. The KR 20 index values homogenously reached 0.937 for introduction, 0.8424 for LASA and 0.8195 for storage and labelling chapters, suggesting that the learning modules were reliable, operational, feasible and attractive.

Conclusion: The validated instrument considered as a vital tool to improve the community pharmacist’s knowledge and handling of HRM (s), thus contributing to better patient care.