Implementing new community pharmacy services adds value to pharmacists’ contribution to public health and the development of Person-Centred Care (PCC) [1]. Globally, Agomo et al. found that community pharmacy services may significantly contribute to the health education of patients, health promotion, vaccination and immunization, disease screening and prevention, and sexual health [2]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, patients with chronic non-communicable diseases, like diabetes mellitus (DM), suffered from the lack of medical care, and therefore community pharmacists (CPs) played an important role [3].
In the European Union, only 13 countries had implemented Diabetes Management Services (DMS) in community pharmacies by 2018 [4]. In Serbia, the DMS service was introduced in July 2019 as a pilot project. It was fully implemented in September 2020 [5]. The service consisted of 6 consecutive monthly interventions to increase patients’ knowledge of appropriate therapy use, physical activity and nutrition, self-monitoring of blood glucose, and disease awareness [5]. The service has been optional. Only pharmacists who attended the diabetes service course (DSC), passed the exam, and provided the service to at least ten patients, received the title of Diabetes Advisor Community Pharmacist (DACPs) and were certified to provide DMS by the Pharmaceutical Chamber of Serbia (PCS). The DACPs provide DMS only upon patients' request and in a predefined schedule. Otherwise, these pharmacists provide regular pharmacy services.
In a meta-synthesis, Hossain et al. identified “humanistic attributes” as significant enablers for community pharmacy services implementation from the patients' perspective. Those attributes were: being respectful, caring, non-judgemental, friendly, empathetic, supportive, and approachable [6]. All the mentioned attributes and behaviors were also recognized as desired behaviors within the Emotional Intelligence (EI) framework of self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and relationship management competencies [7]. Among emerging categories of characteristics that support the success of a pharmacist, Ward et al. identified EI to be a top one [8]. As a strength of a successful, emotionally intelligent pharmacist, the authors defined a 'code' as “handles stress” [8].
EI has been defined as a set of skills that can help us better perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions in ourselves and others. EI was found to “predict success in important domains, like personal and work relationships” [9].
Several studies demonstrated that the development of EI can support health professionals (HPs) in better patient engagement and internal communications, leading to improved patient satisfaction [10–12]. Still, there is limited research on EI in pharmaceutical care (PhC) [13, 14].
CPs are particularly exposed to complex and challenging situations in which they ought to deal with stress, sometimes conflicting interests of business and own beliefs and ethics, and communicate successfully with patients [10]. The DACPs who introduced the new DMS services should presumably possess higher EI capability levels and, consequently, be better 'equipped' to deal with mentioned challenges than CPs. However, the DSC did not include EI-related topics. On the other hand, it would be of high value to understand if EI levels between DACPs differ from their controls, the CPs who provide standard PhC. In addition, testing the correlation between EI and perceived stress (PS) in both groups of pharmacists would also be helpful for further improvement of PhC.
Aim
The study's aims were 2-fold: to determine if there are differences in EI and PS levels between DACPs and CPs, and to explore correlations between EI and PS levels in these two groups of pharmacists.
Ethics Approval
The Ethics Committee approved the study protocol of the PCS (No. 262/2–2, dated April 12th, 2021).