Ethics in patient counseling and pharmaceutical practice by emotions management

Abstract

Effective communication is an essential part of pharmacy practice aimed to ensured counsel patients about their prescribed medicines. This will lead to a rational use of medicine with an improved therapeutic outcome, increasing compliance and decreasing confusion and insecurity. For the purpose of legal regulation of pharmacist-patient communication, professional associations from different countries have developed the codes of ethics for pharmacists. As in other countries, the Code of Ethics of Pharmacists in Romania and Law 81/1997 guarantee respect for the rights and dignity of the patient. Communication is a highly complex area and ability to understand a patient’s feelings could be the key to ensuring high-quality interactions. Developing that relationship can mean addressing patients’ emotional responses to therapy, as well as acknowledging their concerns or frustrations. Through careful analysis of the communication in pharmaceutical practice we can help develop skills, tools and processes to make patient encounters as optimal as possible. This paper analyses some tools to understand a patient’s feelings that could be the key to ensuring high-quality interactions.