Pharmacists' Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Upper Respiratory Infections (URI) in Iran: A Cross Sectional Study

To identify the knowledge and attitudes of community pharmacists towards upper respiratory infections.

The pharmacists, who participated in an annual clinical pharmacy congress in Tehran, were enrolled in this study.

We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study to assess the knowledge and attitudes of 72 community pharmacists towards upper respiratory infections (URI) using a questionnaire.

We investigated the knowledge and attitudes of pharmacists towards rational antibiotics use in URI in Iran. Also we tried to detect causes of irrational antibiotic use.

The response rate of our study was 72%. Of all respondents, 98.61% answered the knowledge question" inappropriate use of antibiotics could lead to drug resistance and would increase drug allergy" correctly. More than half (55.56%) of the community pharmacists believed that pharmacists can be affected by patients' expectations for antibiotics prescription. A majority of pharmacists gave a correct response to questions about beneficial use of corticosteroid in URI (90.28%) and symptoms persistent after 10-14 days even with antibiotic therapy (86.11%). More than half of all pharmacists had misconceptions on antibiotic use for URI in children under 2 years old. More than half of all pharmacists believed that most cases of URI are viral infections. Also, 90.28% of all pharmacists believed that guidelines for antibiotics prescribing may be beneficial in appropriate antibiotic use.

According to a high response rate for the question about efficiency of antibiotics prescription guidelines, reliable information on the appropriate use of antibiotics should be more widely available for pharmacists.