Abstract
This paper looks at the opinions of 241 European academics (who provide pharmacy education), and of 258 European community pharmacists (who apply it), on competences for pharmacy practice. A proposal for competences was generated by a panel of experts using Delphi methodology. Once finalized, the proposal was then submitted to a large, European-wide community of academics and practicing pharmacists in an additional Delphi round. Academics and community pharmacy practitioners recognized the importance of the notion of patient care competences, underlining the nature of the pharmacist as a specialist of medicines. The survey revealed certain discrepancies. Academics placed substantial emphasis on research, pharmaceutical technology, regulatory aspects of quality, etc., but these were ranked much lower by community pharmacists who concentrated more on patient care competences. In a sub-analysis of the data, we evaluated how perceptions may have changed since the 1980s and the introduction of the notions of competence and pharmaceutical care. This was done by splitting both groups into respondents < 40 and > 40 years old. Results for the subgroups were essentially statistically the same but with some different qualitative tendencies. The results are discussed in the light of the different conceptions of the professional identity of the pharmacist.
Highlights
There have been a number of changes in pharmacy education over the past 20 years starting firstly with the introduction of the concept of “competence for practice”
The competences for practice produced after the 3rd Delphi round, were ranked by a large, European-wide population of academics and community pharmacists using the PHAR-QA
Ranking scores were calculated as as % of total frequency; this represents the percentage of respondents that considered a given competence as “obligatory”. This calculation is based on that used by the MEDINE (Medical Education in Europe) consortium that ranked the competences for medical practice [12]
Summary
There have been a number of changes in pharmacy education over the past 20 years starting firstly with the introduction of the concept of “competence for practice”. A second change in pharmacy education over the past 20 years concerns the notion of pharmaceutical care. Pharmaceutical care is the responsible provision of drug therapy for the purpose of achieving outcomes that improve a patient’s quality of life. It is englobed in a wider notion of patient care that refers to services rendered by healthcare professionals, and non-professionals under their supervision, for the benefit of the patient. The number of articles published that have “pharmaceutical care” in the title has risen from one in 1960 to 210 in 2008 (see reference to Web of Science cited previously) This rise is similar to the rise in the interest in the notion of competence described in the previous paragraph. It could be expected that the younger age subgroup will have been much more exposed to the changes outlined above than the older age subgroup
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