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.