Quality of pharmaceutical care is closely associated with patient satisfaction

We read with great interest the study by Martinez-Lopez-de-Castro et al (in July 2018),1 which analysed the factors leading to a greater satisfaction among patients visiting the outpatient hospital pharmacy. We strongly agree with their findings that the information provided, resolution of doubts, pharmacist’s personal treatment of the patient and time devoted to the patient are important in meeting patient preferences and expectations. We are from a district general hospital in China with 1800 beds. With electronic prescriptions and an automatic drug delivery machine, which were introduced in 2014, considerable time and manpower is saved. However, a neutral third-party investigation report shows that the patient satisfaction of the outpatient hospital pharmacy did not exhibit a consistent upward trend. We sought to explore a method to improve the quality of pharmaceutical care by setting up full-time clinical pharmacists to resolve any doubts the patients raised during the treatment, showing the patients how …