Abstract:

Background: Pharmacy profession is the backbone in health profession as it ensures the safety, effective and rational use of medicines. According to WHO, there is variation of number of pharmacists which serve a certain population and African continent has a most intense pharmacy crisis. A good awareness and positive attitude towards pharmacy profession among secondary school students could help to increase number of pharmacy personnel.

Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted in selected secondary school at Nyamagana district from 1 May to 30 June, 2021. A total of 399 participants were included by convenient sampling method. Data were collected using structured questionnaires, cleaned and analysed by using IBM SPSS version 20 software.

Results and discussion: In all participants, male was 145(36.3%) and female were 254(63.7%). It seems that majority of participants prefer to study medical doctor 176(44.1%), followed by engineering 85(21.3%) and pharmacy profession tend to take a third place which were only 68(22.1) had a moderate awareness and 52(13.0%) had poor awareness. Regarding attitude, majority of participants 204(51.1%) shown to have a negative attitude, followed by 128(32.1%) who had a neutral attitude and 67(16.8%) had a positive attitude.

Conclusion: This study has demonstrated a need of positive attitude towards pharmacy profession among secondary school students, also good awareness itself is not enough to make to pursuit a certain profession.