Browsing by Author "Kalki, P."

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Community pharmacists’ knowledge, perception and practice towards adverse drug reaction reporting and the factors influence on them in Jaffna district, Sri Lanka.
(Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2021) Thushiyananth, T.; Kalki, P.; Surenthirakumaran, R.
Introduction: Health care professionals are the prime source for spontaneous adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting. An increase in over-the-counter drugs and self-medication practice rapidly increase the risk of ADR incidents in community pharmacy setup. Objectives: To assesses the community pharmacists’ knowledge, perception and practice towards adverse drug reaction reporting and the influencing factors in Jaffna district. Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study with self-administered questionnaire which consist of five parts. All registered community pharmacists in Jaffna district were included in the study. The level of knowledge and perception was determined by the marks obtained by the pharmacists. The chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test were used to test the association of variables. Results: The response rate was 82.05% (N=64). Among the pharmacists, 40.6% had good knowledge on ADR reporting. Age (p=0.009) and work-experience (p=0.006) were statistically significant with knowledge. 75.0% of the pharmacists had good perception where, work-hours (p=0.040), work-experience (p=0.006) and work-position (p=0.013) were statistically significant association. Suspected and reported ADR in studied community pharmacists were 26.5% and 3.2% respectively. Prime reasons for not reporting ADRs were lack of patient complaints and doubt in the causality of a particular drug. 45.3% of the pharmacists were suggested that the frequent workshops would increase the ADR detection and reporting. Conclusions: Most of the pharmacists had poor knowledge and good perception but with very poor practice in ADR reporting. Junior pharmacists have more awareness in ADR reporting.
Research on the use of medicinal plants: a systematic review on methodology
(Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Kalki, P.; Riewpaiboon, A.
BACKGROUND: A large number of people in the world rely on medicinal plants (MP). Among 1500 species, 208 are frequently used in Sri Lanka. The knowledge of the people about many MPs is very poor. One can argue forever what precise percentage of the world’s population use MPs. To address this question, scientific research on MP usage have been conducted. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of research methodology of MP consumption and usage. METHODS: The English articles available on Pubmed database were reviewed. The search term was “treat**Title+) OR consum**Title+) OR use**Title+) OR utili**Title+)) AND medicinal plants *MeSH Terms]. The inclusion criteria were consumption, study, survey of MP published between 2009 and 2013. Exclusion criteria were review, chemical, clinical, pharmacological, animal studies and MP for specific illness. RESULTS: Of the 225 articles, sixteen were selected for full review. The results were summarized under following headings: settings, study design, aim/objective of study, study population, sample, data collection, and statistics used. Europe and Africa were contributing to 75% of the articles. The study population comprised key informants and lay people. None of the studies indicated the sample size calculation formula. Mean sample size of articles was 99.36 (SD=78). The sampling method was purposive (09), random (03), and snowballing (02). The data collection was done by interview using questionnaires. Descriptive (09) and advanced (07) statistics have been used. CONCLUSIONS: All articles were surveys. Number of publications was three articles per year. Most of them were conducted in developing countries and analysed using descriptive statistics.