Swedish community pharmacy employees' knowledge and experience of substandard and falsified medical products: a cross-sectional descriptive survey

OBJECTIVES: Substandard and falsified medical products are, according to the World Health Organization, a global threat to public health. To evaluate if community pharmacy employees can guide the public to safer medication purchases, their knowledge and experience about SF medical products was examined.

METHODS: A digital questionnaire was distributed to the five dominating pharmacy companies in Sweden, representing 97% of the community pharmacies (1391/1433), giving the theoretical possibility of reaching 6200 employees. Three companies published a link to the questionnaire on their intranets, one distributed the link via e-mail to the responsible pharmacist for quality and knowledge, respectively. The fifth company did not pass on, due to technical problems. Employees aged 18 years or older with customer contact were invited to participate.

KEY FINDINGS: The questionnaire was available for 74% of all community pharmacies (1067/1433), having approximately 4900 employees with customer contact. The response rate was 5% (228/4900). Of the respondents, 89% were pharmacists (203/228), 84% were women (191/228) and 43% were 35-49 years (98/228). The respondents worked in pharmacies of different size, located both in rural and urban areas. The definition of substandard and falsified medical products was known by 182 of the 228 respondents (80%) and the main source of knowledge was media (61%, 111/228). The common European logo for authorized online pharmacies was not recognized by 74% (169/228).

CONCLUSIONS: For pharmacy employees to guide the public to safer medication purchases, knowledge about substandard and falsified medical products needs to be enhanced specially about legal international e-commerce.