Perceptions and attitudes of pharmacy students towards volunteering at health promotional programs: a cross-sectional study from Malaysia

The present study aims to explore the perceptions and understanding of future pharmacists towards volunteerism in health promotional activities. The study was designed as a cross sectional, descriptive survey. All pharmacy undergraduates (n = 293) from the first, second and third professional years enrolled at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia were targeted for the study. A pre validated, 15-itemed questionnaire was used for data collection and was analysed by using SPSS. Dichotomous groups were compared with Mann-Whitney U test. The Jonckheere-Terpstra test was used to evaluate the trend of association. Where significant associations were reported, effect size was calculated by using Kendall tau correlation coefficient. p value of <0.05 was considered to be of statistical significance. Out of 200 respondents, 185 completed the study with a response rate of 92.5 %. Agreement with mandatory status of volunteerism at community services was significant with gender (p = 0.003) and year of study (p = 0.045). Confidence in performing health promotional activities (p = 0.001, τ = 0.155) and needed communication skills during health promotional activities (p = 0.022, τ = 0.322) were also significantly associated with year of study with a moderate positive trend from junior to senior classes. Although pharmacy undergraduates showed positive interest and will to volunteer at the health promotional programs, certain issues were also highlighted. Therefore, in order to address these challenges, pharmacy curriculum needs to include a greater emphasis on role of pharmacists in public health. This can be achieved by having a dedicated core course as part of pharmacy curriculum.