Abstract
Pharmaceutical care describes a philosophy and practice paradigm that calls upon pharmacists to work with other healthcare professionals and patients to achieve optimal health outcomes. Among the most accessible health professionals, pharmacists have responsibilities to individual patients and to public health, and this has been especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pharmacists in high-volume community settings provide a growing number of clinical services (i.e., immunizations and point-of-care testing), but according to job satisfaction and workplace survey data, demands related to filling prescriptions, insufficient staffing, and working conditions are often not optimal for these enhanced responsibilities and lead to job dissatisfaction. Professional codes of ethics require a high level of practice that is currently difficult to maintain due to a number of related barriers. In this paper, we summarize recent changes to the scope of practice of pharmacists, cite ethical responsibilities from the American Pharmacists Association Code of Ethics, review data and comments from workplace surveys, and make a call for change. Corporate managers, state boards of pharmacy, and professional organizations have a shared responsibility to work with community pharmacists in all settings to find solutions that ensure optimal and ethical patient care. Attention to these areas will enhance patient care and increase job satisfaction.
Highlights
Patient-centered pharmaceutical care describes a philosophy of enhanced responsibility for pharmacists to work toward optimal health-related outcomes of patients whom they serve [1]
According to the Principles of Practice for Pharmaceutical Care put forth by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), this ideal describes “a patient-centered, outcomes-oriented pharmacy practice that requires the pharmacist to work in concert with the patient and the patient’s other healthcare providers to promote health, to prevent disease, and to assess, monitor, initiate, and modify medication use to assure that drug therapy regimens are safe and effective” [2]
Pharmacists are being increasingly recognized for their role as front-line healthcare professionals with more direct and regular access to patients than other members of the healthcare team, with the majority of Americans living within five miles of a community pharmacy [4]
Summary
Patient-centered pharmaceutical care describes a philosophy of enhanced responsibility for pharmacists to work toward optimal health-related outcomes of patients whom they serve [1]. Pharmacists who practice under this paradigm consider themselves active members of the healthcare team and partners with physicians, nurses, other healthcare professionals, as well as with their patients, and they place particular emphasis on their own area of expertise: the appropriate use of medications. Pharmacists continue to be an important resource for patients in need of health-related information and are well positioned to provide preventative health screenings and services that historically have been in the purview of physicians and other primary care providers [5] When this higher-level ideal of patient-centered pharmaceutical care was first introduced three decades ago, it was met with a mixture of excitement and trepidation on the part of the pharmacy community. Adopted by the American Pharmacists Association membership, October 27, 1994
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