2021 Volume 13 Issue 1 Pages 62-67
In order to ensure patient safety, pharmacists need to encourage patients to take all their prescriptions to one pharmacy. Implementation of the Family Pharmacist System, which is an institutionalization of this approach, is a step in this direction and patient behavior has been investigated ever since the system was adopted. However, till date, no study has investigated behavioral changes through follow up of the same patient. Therefore, in this internet-based study, we obtained patients’ responses to 12 questions including those concerning the centralization of prescriptions and presentation of medication diaries to investigate the behavioral changes in the individual patients before and after the adoption of the Family Pharmacist System. Responses from a total of 2,291 patients were analyzed. Among all the patients, the biggest behavioral change was observed regarding the centralization of prescriptions, which increased from 27.3% to 35.4%. The next biggest change concerned the presentation of medication diaries, which increased from 74.2% to 77.0% after adoption of the Family Pharmacist System. Responses to other questions indicated an increase of less than 1.6%. These results suggest that awareness regarding the Family Pharmacist System may improve the rates of centralization of prescriptions and presentation of medication diaries.