Date of Award

11-10-2022

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Health Policy and Management

First Advisor

Dr Sameen Siddiq

Second Advisor

Dr Tazeen Ali

Third Advisor

Shahzad Ali

Department

Community Health Sciences

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Healthcare providers, patients, and the public's health are all impacted by emergencies and disasters. Pharmacy services are crucial in preserving the health of their populations during disasters or emergencies. Despite the critical roles and contributions of pharmacy services in disasters or emergency events, little is known about their level of preparedness and response capacity to disasters that may affect the health of communities. The traditional services of the pharmacy system include the extemporaneous preparations and dispensing of medications by a trained pharmacist. These days, though, they're looking to offer more services than just the usual mechanical ones. Hospital pharmacies work to provide patients with comprehensive medical care, incorporating services such as patient counselling, pharmaceutical therapy management, immunization, preventative health screening, supply chain, and inventory control. Pharmacy services have a history of critical role during disasters or emergency events. This study assesses the level of preparedness and response capacity of the pharmacy system in tertiary care hospitals of Karachi in terms of emergency preparedness and response.
METHOD: A mixed method study design has been used, which was composed of (1) a survey questionnaire cross-sectional study (quantitative) and (2) a qualitative exploratory study using semi-structured interviews (qualitative). Quantitative and qualitative data has been collected concurrently, then analyzed independently for interpreting and maintaining results and then synthesized to develop critical findings.
FINDINGS: For the purpose of this study, an analytical framework has been adopted from the Meghana Aruru study (PEPR framework), and the study focused on three major areas;
1. Emergency preparedness and response.
2. Operation management.
3. Patient care and public health interventions. The findings from this study indicated that one of the private-teaching hospitals in the rural area of Karachi had the capacity to respond to public health emergencies, in terms of availability of preparedness plan, involved the pharmacy services in EP&R training, ensuring the sufficient stock of emergency medications to treat the adequate amount of patients in an emergency event, maintained uninterrupted supplies of emergency medications, well-designed supply chain, and inventory management protocol. One of the government-teaching hospitals had a moderate capacity to respond to any emergency events while facing some challenges like stocking out of emergency medications. A Lacunae in the availability of preparedness plans, training, and well designed protocols for supply chain and inventory management were identified in the rest of the two private and government non-teaching hospitals.
CONCLUSION: The pharmacy department was crucial to emergency preparedness and response, helping with case identification and management, supporting public health initiatives, and assuring continued pharmaceutical supply and access, among other things. The emergency situations have made gaps in the delivery of pharmacy services precise. Further studies need to be done to develop a framework to enable effective assessment and responses in emergencies. Department Expanding pharmacy roles and responsibilities in catastrophe or emergency situations would be made possible by formalizing such responses through instruction, research, and development.

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1

Last Page

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