Proposed Role and Responsibilities of Pharmacists in Patient Care at Primary Care Level

Abstract

Introduction: After the reform of health service structure, several health professionals have improved their roles in delivering patient care, family care and community care at primary level effectively. Pharmacists, as experts in medicines, have joined the primary care team with the mission to ensure that patients use medicines as prescribed and that the treatment target is achieved. However, their functions were not clearly identified. This study aimed to identify roles and responsibilities of pharmacists in patient care at primary care level. Methods: This is a qualitative study. Face-to-face interview technique was employed to collect data from pharmacists and health personnel involving in primary care management. Ten key informants were purposively selected. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: The study reveals that, there were 5 roles in patients care that pharmacists at primary care level should uptake : pharmaceutical service provider (the responsibility consisted of 14 tasks), educator for health care and health products (3 tasks), patientys drug profile manager (6 tasks), inventory control manager (5 tasks) and drug consultant for health personnel(4 tasks). Conclusion: The sample health personnel in the multidisciplinary team who had experience in delivering services at primary care level were of the view that pharmacistsy roles in patient care at primary level composed of 2 components: provider of services directly to patients and system manager to support the services. In the next study, a quantitative study should be conducted to confirm the components of the roles of pharmacists in patient care at primary care level.