Publics Should Make Full Use of Pharmacist’s Professional Services

Date:100/12.26 ~ 101/01.01

Resource: The Pharmacy Weekly, No.1752,2012

Original Link: Should Make Full Use of Pharmacist’s Professional Services

Translator: Yu-Han Kao

The societal responsibility of pharmacist is to meet public’s needs. What is the demand of medicine therapy for public? Public needs to get proper drugs which are exact to their indications, easy to use and control their disease well without side effects and. Therefore, pharmacists should provide proper drugs and let public use medicines safely and correctly.

Manufacture proper drugs Allow people to purchase drugs medicines from pharmacy

Which services can pharmacists offer to the public? Factories that are qualified with cGMP are rationally the most important parts. To manufacture highly qualified medicine, these factories should confirm their products can be easily absorbed via human body and thus have therapeutic effects. Meanwhile, factories need promising their first lot and the final lots have the same bioavailability. These are so called manufacture perfect medicines. In the other side, the responsibility of the government concerned is to legislate regulations and to supervise the factories to

make sure all medicines are qualified before they are introduced to market. Another service pharmacists can offer include they shall prepare the qualified medicines to the phamacy and thus they can offer medicines to the public through people prescriptions.

To permit the safety of the public, pharmacists should simultaneously confirm whether the medicine in one prescription have any therapeutically problem, including the dosage, the drug-drug interactions, and the repeated orders. If they discover any medical problems, pharmacists should communicate with doctors to resolve it. This is the so called judgement service. Besides, pharmacists play roles of delivering the correct medicines to the patients after double check the prescriptions, directing the patients the attending indications, and reminding the patients the correct time to take medicines, meaning make sure that every patient realizes the importance of taking drugs on time.

Pharmacists provide patients complete medication counseling

Patient who is under the chronic disease such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes mellitus, or hyperlipidemia can also consult with pharmacists about their every concerned medicine. At this time, pharmacists shall get over with some directs:

whether the patient knows why he or she should take the medicines, the actual time and method that the patients take the medicines, whether the patient experience any uncomfortable condition after taking medicines, and whether the patient needs more medicine educations, etc.

        When a patient steps to a community pharmacy for help because of his mild syndrome, the pharmacist should evaluate the duration, severity, any pre-process treatment, the accompanying reason and the result whether the patient is under a critical condition. Thus, pharmacists should transfer the patient to the hospital or even ER if he is now with coexisting fetal risks. Meanwhile, pharmacists can offer indication medicine to the one who is under the stable mild disease and education how to make self home care. The best idea is trace the patient’s condition after two or three days and offer further recommendation. This is the so called consultation service for the mild symptoms. Besides, community pharmacy also offers the assistance of the quitting help.

Patients who stay in the long term care organization s such as nursing homes or hospices also need the pharmacists to integrate their medicines since their prescriptions may be from several hospitals or dispensaries. In these cases, pharmacists would take well use of their professional knowledge to judge whether those medicines are repeatedly ordered, there are drug-drug interactions, therapeutically inhibitions, or improper doses. This is the so called medicine estimation service in long term care organizations.

Pharmaceutical home care Professional services at home

People are prone to consult several doctors for their diverse diseases. These doctors would offer the suitable prescriptions but they do not know which medicine other doctors had ordered. When patients go home, they discover that there are tens of several drugs in the bags, worrying some problems such as the repeated drugs or drugs interactions. (Actually, we can conclude as many as forty medicine therapeutic problems) Do they need pharmacists to assist reviewing drugs at home, discover problems and then discuss with their doctors? Meanwhile, are they worried about taking medicines at home? Do they forget how to take medicine properly and when they should take medicines? Do they need pharmacists to organize their drugs into the seven-day drug kits? And, do they need pharmacists to assist them to clean up the expired drugs? This is so called pharmaceutical home care. Certainly, pharmacists in the hospitals also offer these service such as dispersing drugs and management of medicine use and make sure that every patient is accepted the correct medicine. These service including offer medicine to OPD and hospital stayed patients, supervise any mistake of drugs use, estimate the drug use, and the ward and intensive unit pharmaceutical services.

Select a family pharmacist to ensure drug use safety

How should the public take the adequate professional service from pharmacists? Query the pharmacists before taking medicines is the first step. It is strongly recommended that the public chose a society pharmacy to dispense his own medicines and thus the pharmacy can gain the whole information of the individual to ensure drug use safety and property. Public should select a family pharmacist and consult him or her with all problems relevant to medicines. Public should properly use this channel to make sure all drugs are indicated to indications, efficient, safe and easily used. Therefore, this is helpful to improve the health and the quality of life.