OBJECTIVES: Medication Therapy Management (MTM) service provides set of clinical activities to optimize therapeutic outcomes for patients. It includes a board range of interventions to achieve three different goals: enhance patients’ adherence to their medications, give optimal education and counselling to patients regarding their drug therapies and detect any adverse drug reaction associated with the therapy. Malaysia established Medication Therapy Adherence Clinic (MTAC) in 2004 to enhance patients’ adherence to medications. This study assessed Penang pharmacists’ opinions towards applying MTM service in the future and identified various barriers to MTM service provision.

METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was carried out among all pharmacists working at Penang General Hospital.

RESULTS: A total of 93 out of 130 (71.5%) were included in the study (61.3% between the age of 20 to 30 years old, 74.2% female, 68.8% Chinese, 88.2% holding bachelor degree and 48.4% working in MTAC and outpatient pharmacy). All pharmacist agreed that MTM services improved the quality of health services and most pharmacists were interested in providing MTM service (92.5%). Moreover, 95.7% were interested in acquiring more information about MTM service and 87 pharmacists had a desire for taking training workshops regarding MTM service. About the barriers that might affect MTM service implementation, the most common barriers identified by pharmacists were need of high budget (51.6%), lack of time (46.2%) and difficulty to access current guidelines (24.7%). All pharmacists stated that the physical environment is not a barrier because the hospital contains counselling rooms.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the research findings provide some insights about the Penang General Hospital pharmacists’ perceptions regarding MTM service. Although some of the respondents had some concerns about MTM service but majority of them agreed and showed their interest towards the implementation of MTM service.