The pharmacist's guide to the future: Are we there yet?

"Opportunities and responsibilities": how do pharmacists assess their professionalism?

INTRODUCTION

Professionalism is fundamental to the existence of professions. In pharmacy, interest in this theme improved with events that examined the resocialization of pharmacists in care. With this, evaluating professionalism can help the operationalization of the theme and, consequently, the development of strategies for pharmacy consolidation before its challenges. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the professionalism of Brazilian pharmacists.

METHODS

To meet the objective, a cross-sectional study was conducted between March 2022 and August 2023. Data were collected using the Brazilian version of the "Modification of Hall's Professionalism Scale for Use with Pharmacists". The scale has 39 items grouped into the domains: autonomy, vocation, professional council, self-regulation, continuing education, and altruism. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and an ANOVA analysis of variance with post-hoc Hochberg or Games-Howell tests with Bootstrapping was conducted to verify differences between groups.

RESULTS

600 pharmacists participated in this study. The majority (69%) was female and carried out their professional activities in community pharmacies (50%). Professionalism scores ranged between 14 and 29 points, with an average of 22.8 points. Pharmacists working in outpatient clinics had higher scores in most factors, namely, altruism, continuing education, professional council, vocation, and autonomy. This indicates that the inclination of pharmacists to occupy areas focused on care can be significant to assess professionalism.

CONCLUSIONS

The data obtained indicate that pharmacists working in outpatient clinics had higher professionalism scores compared to others. This corroborates the worldwide trend experienced by pharmacy in recent decades, which is the execution of increasingly patient-centered practice models.

The Need for Competency-Based Education

OBJECTIVES

While pharmacy education updates learning as new information arises, changes to learning experiences can trail behind current practices and technology. There have been multiple calls for radical changes in how health professions education is delivered to ensure patients are receiving high-quality care. Competency-based education has been one way discussed in the literature for how to handle this need to develop students who have a willingness to learn and can problem-solve. The goal of this review is to examine whether competency-based education is needed to drive the profession of pharmacy forward.

FINDINGS

To address, we collaboratively identified stakeholder perspectives to evaluate the need. The following stakeholders achieved consensus among the committee members: patients/society, learners, workplace/profession, and academic institutions.

SUMMARY

Based on those perspectives, needs, and gaps to address those needs were identified and are presented in this review.

Digital pharmacists: the new wave in pharmacy practice and education

Pharmacists now face the biggest challenges in the history of the profession: the use of digital technologies in pharmacy practice and education and the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019. Worldwide, pharmaceutical care and pharmacy education via digital technologies have significantly increased and will be incorporated into patient care and the teaching–learning process, respectively. Thus, in this new era of pharmacy practice and education, curricula should promote the development of specific competencies for the cognitive, conscious, and effective use of digital tools. This requires the training of “disruptive” educators, who are capable of using teaching–learning methods adapted to the digital environment and educational processes suitable for stimulating the use of effective disruptive technologies. This commentary argues that the pharmacy profession can no longer wait for the slow integration of digital technologies into pharmacy practice and education.

The role of Design Science Research Methodology in developing pharmacy eHealth services

The increasing focus on efficiency of care has prompted health systems to look for innovative solutions that yield maximum value for care. Integration of care and eHealth are seen as the most promising solutions in the high technological environment of the coming decades. Pharmacy services have been developed to a point where the face of community pharmacy has changed dramatically. Thus, service design and implementation has become an area of increased attention by Pharmacy practice researchers, and the arrival of eHealth concepts to Pharmacy is driving the need to find alternative ways to design new services. Moreover, known barriers and challenges remain when securing integration of pharmacy services with the health systems. In this paper, Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), a user-centered alternative methodology to the design, development and implementation of health services, especially eHealth services, is presented. This alternative, originally from the Information Sciences field, has been adopted as a service design methodology in diverse settings, including health care. Here, case studies are used to explain how a DSRM process should be conducted in a health care setting, illustrating what methods to choose in each step of the process. Finally, the advantages of DSRM compared to other user-centered methodologies for service design are presented, hopefully prompting the discussion on the use of DSRM for the study of the implementation and sustainability of pharmacy services.

Primary health care policy and vision for community pharmacy and pharmacists in Portugal

The central role of the Portuguese National Health Service (P-NHS) guarantees virtually free universal coverage. Key policy papers, such as the National Health Plan and the National Plan for Patient Safety have implications for pharmacists, including an engagement in medicines reconciliation. These primary health care reform, while not explicitly contemplating a role for pharmacists, offer opportunities for the involvement of primary care pharmacists in medicines management. Primary care pharmacists, who as employees of the P-NHS work closely with an interdisciplinary team, have launched a pilot service to manage polypharmacy in people living with multimorbidities, involving potential referral to community pharmacy. Full integration of community pharmacy into primary health care is challenging due to their nature as private providers, which implies the need for the recognition that public and private health sectors are mutually complementary and may maximize universal health coverage. The scope of practice of community pharmacies has been shifting to service provision, currently supported by law and in some cases, including the needle and syringe exchange program and generic substitution, remunerated. Key changes envisaged for the future of pharmacists and their integration in primary care comprise the development and establishment of clinical pharmacy as a specialization area, peer clinician recognition and better integration in primary care teams, including full access to clinical records. These key changes would enable pharmacists to apply their competence in medicines optimization for improved patient outcomes.