Abstract :
This study aimed to investigate the drug identifiers used in Thailand and other tools that Thai community pharmacists used for drug identification. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted in pharmacies in Thailand in 2018. The protocol and materials for the research were approved by Institutional Review Board. The participants were selected by convenience sampling. A total of 20 pharmacists were included in this study. The main reason that the identification was required was that pharmacists encountered drugs that were prescribed or dispensed without labels. Pharmacists used information on packaging, drug products, and patient information to guide the identification. The most used approaches for medication identification were to use self-reference, to search in books, and to ask other pharmacists. Features of the identifiers that were favored by pharmacists included ease of use, trustworthiness, user interaction, availability of specific drug categories, up-to-dateness, and free accessibility.
