An Overview

Pharmacy is a Nobel profession. Being a pharmacist isn't just about selling medicinal products and devices. Recently, pharmacy profession has shifted from being product- oriented to being patient-oriented. In other words, a pharmacist role isn't limited to providing medications or medicinal products to the consumer, but it widens to involve other roles, all revolve around providing what is known as "Pharmaceutical Care". 

According to ASHP (American Society of Hospital Pharmacists), Pharmaceutical care is the direct, responsible provision of medication-related care for the purpose of achieving definite outcomes that improve a patient’s quality of life. This definition as simple as it may seem, yet it incorporates multiple aspects which we will discuss in detail. 

Principle Elements of Pharmaceutical Care:

1. Medication related: This means that pharmacists' role is not only dispensing medications but in involves much more. First of all, the pharmacist should check that the medications comply with the condition they are prescribed for (Guidelines). Secondly, Pharmacists should check the dosing regimen (correct dose, correct frequency, correct duration, dose modifications in case of kidney/liver dysfunctions). Third, they should check for drug-drug and drug-Food interactions (including OTC and Herbal/supplement products). Lastly, Pharmacists should provide correct patient counselling and offer a monitoring plan for the patients to assess both efficacy and safety of medications.
2. Care: Pharmacists should treat their patients as patients not just consumers who come to their pharmacies to buy a "Product". Thus, one of the important roles of a pharmacist is taking proper Medical and medication history (including social and family history if present). This is to ensure that the patients are receiving proper therapy.
3. Definite outcomes: The purpose of any medical therapy is ensuring optimal treatment of the patients. Thus, definitive outcomes must be discussed and decided on before any therapeutic plan. Outcomes can vary according to the patient's condition, either treatment, relive of symptoms, preventing complications, preventing progression of disease or palliative treatment. So, the pharmacist should be aware of the desired outcome to ensure that optimal therapy is provided to the patient.
4. Quality of Life: Quality of life is a very important component that most people miss or ignore. As discussed, the aim of a therapeutic plan is providing optimal treatment regimen for the patient. But this doesn't always mean it improves "Quality of life". In order to achieve this component, all other components must be implemented. Thus, a complete, proper, therapeutic and monitoring plan are to be provided to each patient and then, this would improve their quality of life.

When we talk about pharmaceutical care, most of us would think that it is limited to clinical pharmacists only, yet this is NOT true. So let's understand more about clinical pharmacy and know the difference between both terms.

Clinical Pharmacy Definition by ESCP (European Society of Clinical Pharmacy) is as follows: 

It’s a health specialty which describes the activities and services of the clinical pharmacist to develop and promote the rational and appropriate use of medicinal products and devices.

From the previous definition, we can deduce that clinical pharmacy profession is actually the implementation of the concept of Pharmaceutical Care. Both concepts represent a shift from product centered à patient centered philosophy in practice. Thus, any Pharmacist (clinical, community, hospital) is obliged to implement concepts and practices of pharmaceutical care. Nevertheless, there is no difference between pharmacists working in different sectors. All must implement the same concepts and roles in their job to improve patient outcomes and quality of life. 

Thus, to sum it up, the role of Pharmacists is to implement pharmaceutical care concepts (Promote correct and appropriate use of medicinal products and devices) during their practice which can be summarized in the following points:

•    Maximize clinical effect of medicines. i.e. using the most effective treatment for each type of patient.
•   Minimize the risk of treatment-induced adverse events. i.e. Monitor therapy course and patient’s compliance with therapy.
•   Trying to provide the appropriate alternative for the greatest number of patients. 

In the following posts, we will start discussing how to implement pharmaceutical care in practice, discuss information resources, and understand how to search properly for required information.

Hope this was of benefit to you. Thank you and Good Luck

References:

1.https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/50.8.1720

2.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3058439/

3.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758081/

4.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92576-9