Expectations and experiences of physicians regarding pharmaceutical care and the expanding role of pharmacists in Jordan

The main aim of this study was to investigate physicians' expectations and experiences regarding pharmaceutical care in Jordan. A questionnaire was hand delivered to a random sample of 240 physicians. The questionnaire collected physicians' current expectations, current experiences and future expectations regarding pharmaceutical care. Physicians' positive expectations were on 6 of the current expectation statements (46% of the statements). In the experience part, for only two statements more than 50% of physicians indicated a positive experience. In the future expectations parts, physicians did not only agree on most of the statements (81% of statements) but also the agreement was by more than two third of them in most of the statements. Physicians in Jordan do not disagree with the concept of pharmaceutical care. They also accept traditional pharmacy services such as educating patients about their treatment. However they have bad experience with pharmacists providing pharmaceutical care or expanding their service. They do not think that pharmacists are currently ready to practice such service. It will be interesting to examine the change in physicians' expectations and experience in the future with the increasing number of PharmD and Master of Clinical Pharmacy graduates.