Pharmacy Practice

by Madjackfrost on October 8, 2009

Pharmaceutical services are increasingly patient-centred rather than drug-centred, as exemplified by the concept of pharmaceutical care. Pharmacists need to both understand and meet patients’ specific pharmaceutical requirements. To do this requires a blend of clinical, scientific and social skills. This shift to patient-centred care comes as health care is increasingly delivered by an integrated team of health workers.

Effective pharmacy practice requires an understanding of the social context within which pharmacy is practised, recognising the particular needs and circumstances of the users of pharmaceutical services, and of pharmacy’s place within health service provision.

With these issues in mind authors have aimed to provide pharmacy students with a background in some of the pertinent issues for effective contemporary pharmacy practice. They purposefully avoided clinical pharmacy and therapeutics per se, along with specific aspects of pharmacy law, because these are already comprehensively covered in existing texts. Textbook focus here is the practice of pharmacy in its social and behavioural context. For instance, how do an individual’s beliefs or social circumstances influence their decision to use a pharmacy, and how might pharmaceutical services best be delivered to meet that individual’s specific health needs? Effective pharmacy practice is based on research evidence and best practice, and original research is referred to, where appropriate, throughout the text. As practice becomes more evidence-based, pharmacists increasingly need to evaluate and implement research findings, and undertake their own research and professional audits. To this end, authors have included sections detailing how medicines use is surveyed and costed, together with practical guidance on doing pharmacy practice research and evaluating pharmaceutical services.

Undergraduate pharmacy courses remain rooted in the pharmaceutical sciences. Within libraries, social and behavioural science texts are segregated from pharmacy texts, and often found at separate sites. Furthermore, interdisciplinary teaching within pharmacy schools remains the exception rather than the rule. Consequently, many of the disciplines and concepts included here will be unfamiliar, perhaps even alien to readers.

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