Purpose: The current level of awareness among health care providers towards working under collaborative agreements, and the barriers that interfere with establishing CDTM agreements between clinical pharmacists and physicians were studied.
Methods: A structured survey was developed after reviewing the literature on CDTM. The questions were validated to assess the level of awareness regarding the role of clinical pharmacists in providing drug therapy management, and to determine the main barriers for not having collaborative agreements with different specialties. In addition to demographic data, physicians' education background, reasons for not having clinical pharmacy services in their clinics, and their perceptions for signing a collaborative agreement were also collected. The sample for the study was obtained from different health specialties in Saudi Arabia. The validated survey was sent and received within approximately two months, Oct-Nov 2017.
Results: We have received 55 responses from different sectors, a 79% response rate. Most physicians had worked before with a clinical pharmacist (76%) and of which 60% valued the services provided by the clinical pharmacist as extremely important and very important (29.1%; 30.9%) respectively. When physicians asked if they have heard about the Collaborative Drug Therapy Management agreement or the term CDTM, 67% of respondents haven't heard that before. Most of the responses, regarding the physicians' awareness of the actual CDTM agreement services, were correct. Only 18% selected incorrect CDTM services. The results showed higher percentages of physicians agreeing with the benefits of CDTM agreement as it can improve overall patient care, reduces risk of drug related adverse events or interactions and allows clinical pharmacists to be part of patient care; 85.5, 83.6 and 83.6 respectively. Physicians who rated the possibility to be involved or to encourage other health care professionals in signing collaborative agreements as high were 76.3 and 74.5 respectively. Based on their specialty, emergency medicine's physicians were most likely to have a CDTM agreement and to encourage others too. On a scale from zero to hundred, the average of the responses rating lack of knowledge about such an agreement as potential barrier on preventing CDTM agreements was 69 ± 0.30. While the gender barrier had the lowest rating with a mean of 15.
Conclusion: There is a huge lack of knowledge and understanding about the role of clinical pharmacists and in CDTM concept. This lack of knowledge affected on having collaborations between clinical pharmacists and physicians in different settings. Educating health care providers and stakeholders about the role of clinical pharmacists in providing drug therapy management and encouraging the concept of CDTM among healthcare providers are the main solutions to enhance clinical pharmacist's role in patient care.
Keywords: Agreement; Barriers; CDTM; Clinical pharmacists; Collaborative Drug Therapy Management; Physicians.