Pharmacists’ prescribing in Saudi Arabia : cross-sectional study describing current practices and future perspectives

Pharmacist prescribing is being increasingly undertaken to better use their skills and reduce the workload of existing prescribers such as doctors, often using formal processes to legitimate these activities. In developing countries like Saudi Arabia, however, pharmacists’ prescribing remains informal with no legislation or formal training and there is a lack of research and understanding into such practices. Therefore, we aimed to describe current pharmacist prescribing practices in Saudi Arabia and explore pharmacists’ views about pharmacists’ prescribing. This is a cross-sectional survey study using an online questionnaire of hospital pharmacists in Saudi Arabia about pharmacists’ prescribing, and associated views about prescribing legislation and barriers to implementing pharmacist prescribing. Over a quarter (28.5%) of pharmacists reported themselves as prescribers, 49% were following a collaborative prescribing model, 18% independent prescribing, and 33% were doing both. Ninety percent of prescribers reported confidence in prescribing the appropriate treatment and 92.3% perceived they will benefit from more prescribing training. Healthcare practice culture and pharmacist’s competency were identified as barriers. There is an overall support for pharmacists’ prescribing in Saudi Arabia among this sample of hospital pharmacists, with limitations in resources and the absence of standardized prescribing training being perceived as key barriers to pharmacists’ prescribing.