Define Pandemic ? ( Health Education and Community Pharmacy )
Answers
Answer:
Objectives: To assess patient knowledge about H1N1 influenza pandemic and vaccine availability, evaluate the effectiveness of student pharmacist education about H1N1 influenza, assess patient comfort with pharmacists as immunization providers, and identify patients preferred location for H1N1 vaccination.
Design: Descriptive, nonexperimental, cross-sectional study.
Setting: 18 community pharmacy advanced pharmacy practice experience (CP-APPE) sites located across New York State, from September 2009 to February 2010.
Participants: Convenience sample of adult (≥18 years of age) patients of CP-APPE sites.
Intervention: Student pharmacists delivered an education intervention to patients and patients completed anonymous surveys.
Main outcome measures: Patient knowledge and comfort with pharmacists as immunizers.
Results: 19 student pharmacists at 18 CP-APPE sites engaged in 215 interventions. The majority of respondents were women (60.9%) who were older than 60 years (43.7%) and white (83.7%). Patient knowledge and comfort with pharmacists as immunizers improved significantly. Compared with baseline, student pharmacist education interventions significantly increased the number of patients who were comfortable receiving the H1N1 influenza vaccination from a pharmacist (from 69.3% to 81.4%, P = 0.012).
By this definition, pandemics can be said to occur annually in each of the temperate southern and northern hemispheres, given that seasonal epidemics cross international boundaries and affect a large number of people. However, seasonal epidemics are not considered pandemics.
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