Pharmacists’ knowledge, attitude and practice of HIV post-exposure prophylaxis: a cross-sectional comparative study in two Nigerian teaching hospitals

Pharmacists play an important role in HIV post-exposure prophylaxis. This study compared the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) among pharmacists practicing in two Nigerian teaching hospitals.

This survey, which adopted a cross-sectional design, was conducted among pharmacists at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) and the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH). Seventy-seven eligible pharmacists completed the standard questionnaire, which was analysed using SPSS Version 25 with appropriate descriptive (frequencies, percentages, mean) and inferential (t test) statistics. The structured questionnaire which was self-administered had four sections: Sect. 1 evaluated the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, Sect. 2 evaluated their knowledge of HIV PEP, Sect. 3 evaluated their attitude towards HIV PEP, and Sect. 4 evaluated their practice of HIV PEP. A student’s t test was used to compare the knowledge scores of the respondents of the two hospitals. The same comparison was done for the attitude scores. Study participants were divided into two groups for each domain based on the group mean scores for each population: good versus poor knowledge and good versus poor attitude. Pharmacists scoring at or above the group mean in each domain were categorised as “good,” while those scoring below were categorised as “poor”. For all analyses, the confidence interval was set at 95%, with p values, less than 0.05 considered statistically significant.

There was a 100% response rate for the questionnaire. Pharmacists aged 26–35 years in ABUTH were 32 (60.4%), while those aged 36–45 years in UNTH were 11 (47.8%). B.Pharm/PharmD was the only qualification of 47 (87%) pharmacists in ABUTH, while 10 (43.5%) had the same qualification in UNTH. The mean knowledge of PEP scores for ABUTH and UNTH were 53.70 ± 1.90 and 56.52 ± 2.85 respectively. The mean knowledge of PEP score in both hospitals was 54.54 ± 1.59%. The mean attitude towards PEP scores for ABUTH and UNTH were 84.22 ± 1.54 and 85.12 ± 2.06 respectively. Their overall mean attitude of PEP score was 84.51 ± 1.23%. For the practice of PEP, 32 (41.56%) of the 75 pharmacists in both hospitals had never dispensed PEP drugs. In ABUTH, 3 (5.8%) pharmacists changed patients’ PEP drugs without consulting the prescriber.

While about half of the pharmacists in ABUTH had a good knowledge of PEP, only a few of their colleagues at UNTH had poor knowledge of PEP. However, the majority of the pharmacists at both hospitals had a good attitude and practice towards PEP, although pharmacists from UNTH performed better.