J Korean Acad Fam Med.  2002 Oct;23(10):1188-1201.

A Survey on the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Separation of Prescribing and Dispensing Medicine: Among Patients of Family Medicine Clinic in an University Hospital

• Kweon HJ
• Rho KW
• Kim HS
• Cho DY
• Sohn MS
• Yoon BB

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In Korea, the separation of prescribing and dispensing medicine was finally accepted as a medical policy in July, 2000, after a long period of discussion and study which was started in 1963. Now a year after the policy started, we investigated the knowledge, attitude, and practice of separation of prescribing and dispensing medicine.
METHODS
Information, concerning whether the policy was effectively carried out and well understood, were gathered from 383 patients, who visited an university hospital from August 20 to September 1, 2001.
RESULTS
The results revealed that 73.1% of the subjects knew the policy precisely. However, only 1.6% of them could answer all four questions on the purpose of the policy. The old-aged, the low educated, the low socioeconomic groups and the residents in agricultural area revealed poor understanding of the policy (P<0.05). Among the total, 74.9% showed negative response toward the policy. Time and cost increment were 75.7% and 75.2%, respectively. Among them 61.1% revealed negative attitude towards continuance the policy and 93.2% revealed dissatisfaction of the policy.
CONCLUSION
The knowledge of the policy was relatively high. However, negative attitudes prevailed on the continuance of the policy. Therefore, more solutions and better strategies for the problems of prescribing and dispensing medicine would be needed.

Keyword

separation of prescribing and dispensing medicine; knowledge; attitude; practice; degree of satisfaction; effectiveness

MeSH Terms

Humans
Korea