Objective
Health Literacy (HL) has garnered considerable attention in recent years. Community pharmacists can play a pivotal role in assessing and improving their customers’ HL. This study aims to assess HL‐related knowledge, attitude and perceived barriers among the community pharmacists of Al Ain, United Arab Emirates.
Methods
A 41‐item questionnaire was used for data collection. The study was conducted on the pharmacists from all sixty pharmacies approved as training sites by Health Authority Abu Dhabi. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data through SPSS®.
Key findings
A total of 85 pharmacists were surveyed. Almost two‐thirds (65.9%) had heard the term HL. A higher proportion (70.6%) had good knowledge, and 60% had positive attitude towards HL. Practice of HL strategies was not common in 41.2% of the participants. Lack of knowledge and lack of organizational resources were reported as the most common barriers towards HL. Statistically significant difference in knowledge and attitude was observed among different age groups. Similarly, overseas graduates were found to be using HL strategies more frequently than their counterparts.
Conclusion
The study found an overall good knowledge and positive attitude towards HL among community pharmacists, with a considerable proportion having below par knowledge, not so positive attitude and infrequent practices of HL strategies. Incorporating HL component in the curriculum and continuous training programmes may help improving the knowledge and attitude of pharmacists towards HL. This may help achieving better health outcomes.