A questionnaire survey study on drug information activities of pharmacists in both hospitals and community pharmacies and the need for a campus-based drug information center was conducted. Questionnaires were prepared both for hospital pharmacists and community pharmacists in separate formats asking their drug information activities regarding three basic aspects of drug information center with comprehensive drug information resources.
Questionnaires were mailed out to 130 hospital pharmacies in country and randomly sampled 2,000 community pharmacies in Seoul, August 14, 1993 and collected until November 5, 1993. Total 112 hospital pharmacies answered to questionnaires showing high response rate of 86% and 312 community pharmacists answered showing poor response rate of 16%. All questionnaires collected were included in the evaluation.
In hospital survey, 24% of responders(27) maintained drug information centers. Among those hospital pharmacies which maintain drug information centers, 82%(22/27) had one or two drug information pharmacists on full-time basis. However, 54% of DI pharmacists had relatively short period of experience shorter than I year in drug information service revealing potential problem in maintaining consistent quality services. Most centers had the basic facilities and equipments for drug information service but, only 3 centers were equipped with CD-ROM drive and only 1 center with microfiche viewer showing that most of centers were not utilizing comprehensive retrieval systems. Regarding other information resources, a few number of centers maintained variety of tertiary resources and major pharmacy journals and, otherwise, few primary and tertiary resources. 89% of centers were receiving less than 15 information requests daily and only 4% were receiving more than 20 requests daily. The difficulties in operating centers that responders felt most seriously were the insufficiency of information resources(30%), pharmacists´ inability in providing effective information(26%), manpower shortage(22%), poor financial support from hospital( 13%) and users´ poor understanding about drug information. About half of hospital pharmacies were not maintaining or publishing drug formulary and newsletter. When DI pharmacists could not find the answers to requests, they utilized manufacturers(49%), other DI centers (37%), or none(8%), and most of them(88%) were not satisfied with the answers, Consequently, all responders indicated that they needed a centralized drug information center with comprehensive resources and specialists.
In community pharmacies, pharmacists were gaining drug informations from pharmacy periodicals(38%), weekly pharmacy newsletters(37%), detail men(14%), package inserts(8%), manufacturers´ advertisements through mass media(2%) and pharmacy textbooks( 1%). They were receiving few DI requests from other health professionals showing that 77% of responders received less than one request monthly or none. When they received DI requests, most of them were dependent on other community pharmacists(46%) or manufacturers(33%) and most of them (89%) were not satisfied with the answers. Most community pharmacies had relatively few DI resources showing that half of responders had a t best a few product-oriented tertiary resources without any primary and secondary resources in questions. Most of responders( 99%) also wanted a centralized drug information center as hospital pharmacists did.
In both hospitals and community environments, DI activities by pharmacists were very weak and primitive in various aspects of drug information practice. Over all, most of practicing pharmacists especially in community pharmacies were not acquainted with systemic and scientific utilization and provision of drug information, and consequently showed strong demand for a well established drug information center who will serve them with comprehensive and complete drug information resources and specialists.
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