Knowledge, attitude, and practice of pharmacists regarding asthma management: a cross-sectional study in Egypt

Asthma is a significant public health issue that poses a substantial health and economic burden. Despite the availability of effective asthma medications, its management remain suboptimal. Recent asthma guidelines have highlighted the importance of pharmacist unique position and its interventional strategies in positively impacting asthma treatment outcomes. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the degree of Egyptian pharmacists' knowledge, attitudes, as well as their practices towards asthma management in line with the recent asthma guidelines.

This cross-sectional study was conducted among 800 pharmacists working in different private and governmental sectors. The data were collected using a 37-item pre-validated self-administered KAP questionnaire. The data were analyzed using Student's t-test and analysis of variance to assess the association between each KAP level and the sociodemographic variables at the significance level of 0.05.

Of the 800 distributed questionnaire, a total of 550 participants (316 Male, and 234 Female) responded, representing a 68.7% response rate. The mean ± SD score of knowledge, attitude, practice, and barrier was 5.49 ± 1.65 (min = 0; max = 8), 23.5 ± 2.84 (min = 15, max = 30), 43.12 ± 8.61 (min = 28, max = 62), and 27.76 ± 3.72 (min = 17, max = 39), respectively. The results showed that poor knowledge, attitude, and practice scores were achieved by 30.54, 0, and 38.72% of participants, respectively.

Our findings revealed the inconsistencies between poor pharmacists' knowledge and practices with respect to their positive attitudes. The lack of pharmacists' knowledge and compliance to recent GINA guidelines in this study highlight the crucial need for effective Educational strategies that should better equip pharmacists for their potential role in asthma care.