Abstract
Nowadays, the classic perception of the pharmaceutical profession in community pharmacies is facing worldwide extinction due to many factors. Among the numerous factors, online pharmacies are increasingly gaining ground thanks to their ability to facilitate customer demand. Nevertheless, they are endangering “face-to-face” contact, affecting the building of customer loyalty based on direct “human” interaction, and consequently reducing pharmacists to mere commercial figures. Patient-centered care communication is emphasized as the essential element to build a solid and appropriate interpersonal relationship with the patient, to make the consultancy process effective, and to strengthen the pharmacist’s professionalism in community pharmacy. This paper presents a narrative review of existing literature with the first aim of pinpointing the factors affecting pharmacy professional practice, and secondly, of how to improve patient-centered communication skills. A more widespread introduction of in-depth study and practice of behavioral, communication, educational, and sociological methodologies and techniques would allow for the development of more effective skills used for providing an efficient consultancy service, improving the capacity of future professionals to approach public relations.
Highlights
The progress of scientific and technological knowledge, the socio-economic and political changes, the demographic growth and the development of National Health Systems, and the birth of clinical pharmacy and pharmaceutical care have all contributed to the evolution of the pharmaceutical profession, which began to expand into other sectors: community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, pharmaceutical industry, regulatory control, drug management, and academic activity [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Society of Great Britain (RPSGB), the Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists (ABDA), and the Federazione degli Ordini dei Farmacisti Italiani, (FOFI)) which direct, regulate, and strengthen the profession and professional training [3,15,24,32,34]. This professional frame is endangered first and foremost by incongruent public intervention when policymakers, instead of considering pharmacy as a branch of the health sector and the pharmacist as a health professional, tend to regulate it as a business company like any other commercial enterprise, ignoring its specific role in society [3,24]. An example of such policies is represented by the generalized drug liberalization which certainly led to a rise in terms of the purchase and sale of over-the-counter drugs (OTC), but that led patients, no longer forced to request medical and pharmaceutical advice, to acquire greater autonomy in terms of self-medication [3]
This framework, called the Patient-centered Communication Tools (PaCT), includes 23 skills organized into five general “tools” to be taught to students at an academic level [43,74]
Summary
The progress of scientific and technological knowledge, the socio-economic and political changes, the demographic growth and the development of National Health Systems, and the birth of clinical pharmacy and pharmaceutical care have all contributed to the evolution of the pharmaceutical profession, which began to expand into other sectors: community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, pharmaceutical industry, regulatory control, drug management, and academic activity [1,2,3,4,5,6]. This professional frame is endangered first and foremost by incongruent public intervention when policymakers, instead of considering pharmacy as a branch of the health sector and the pharmacist as a health professional, tend to regulate it as a business company like any other commercial enterprise, ignoring its specific role in society [3,24] An example of such policies is represented by the generalized drug liberalization which certainly led to a rise in terms of the purchase and sale of over-the-counter drugs (OTC), but that led patients, no longer forced to request medical and pharmaceutical advice, to acquire greater autonomy in terms of self-medication [3].
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