Abstract
Background: Pharmacists are often the first healthcare professionals that patients contact with their illnesses and
requests for medical information, which is enhanced following the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Community
pharmacists are expected and required to possess a broad spectrum of knowledge and skills. Self-assessment of
these competencies is needed for their self-improvement.
Purpose of the study: To assess pharmacists’ clinical knowledge and practice in the safe use of contraceptives,
and to compare the scores obtained by external observation with pharmacists’ self-assessment of their knowledge
as well as investigate the significance of preceptorship experiences. Contraceptives was chosen as the subject area
in view of high rates of abortions as a means of contraception in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Methods: A questionnaire approach was used. The questionnaire included the following: the first domain
contained two case scenarios (safe use of contraceptives), which evaluated clinical knowledge, a second domain in
which pharmacists self-assessed their knowledge to resolve cases from the first domain and a third domain that
measured the demographics of pharmacists (including experience in preceptorship). Dispensing practice was
evaluated in the second domain. The questionnaires were distributed to a convenient sample of 100 pharmacists at
the Annual Meeting of Bosnia and Herzegovina Pharmacists. The results were presented as counts (%). The groups
(preceptors and non-preceptors) were compared using Mann-Whitney U test, paired assessments were analyzed by
Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Spearman’s correlation was used to assess the correlation between variables.
