Abstract: Hospital pharmacy aims to contribute to health improvement and to help patients with health problems by making the best use of the medicines. Pharmacy is the last place where any patient encounters the health professionals before the starting of medication. Dispenser should be well qualified to ensure that patient/patient attendant receive all the necessary information before s/he leaves the pharmacy which is possible through good interaction between them. However besides the personnel involved in pharmacy, quality service from the pharmacy might also be affected by the location, facilities, and overall environment of the pharmacy, types and volume of prescribed drugs etc. The study aims to assess the facilities & personnel of hospital pharmacy based on National Good Pharmacy Practice guideline, and to see the dispensing practice, by analyzing the dispensing time, assessing the quality of label, the communication between dispenser and patient/patient attendant and the dispensing knowledge of the dispenser. It is a prospective study and has involved observation of the site and questionnaires (based on GPP guidelines and general) designed by the researchers to assess the aforementioned based on the response given by 68 dispensers. To assess the dispensing time, quality of label and interaction between dispenser and patient and patient attendant etc, a total of dispensing of 252 prescriptions in 19 hospitals were observed. None of pharmacies in hospital were seen to fully comply with all the selected GPP guidelines. Only 6.67% of pharmacies had separate counseling room. Majority of dispensers were found to be ignoring the importance of apron during dispensing. However Narcotic drugs were stored in lock and key system in all the hospital. Only 5.08% of pharmacy had its own compounding area. 60.29% of the dispensers were of D.Pharm qualified. 27.19% were B. Pharm graduate working as the Incharge of pharmacy. 55.93% hospital pharmacist were not under the management of hospital administration. Only 13.56% hospital had Drugs and Therapeutics Committee (DTC). The average dispensing time was found to be 90.44 seconds. None of prescriptions were adequately labeled. The results show that lots of improvement needs to be done in the dispensing practice. Similarly, the concept of GPP is still in budding stage and all the related sector should work together for proper implementation of GPP
