Community Pharmacy

I. INTRODUCTION

            Community Pharmacy is the healthcare facility that emphasizes providing pharmaceutical services to a community. The person who is responsible for this type of pharmacy called “Community Pharmacist” is the health professional most accessible to the public. He/she supplies medicines in accordance with a prescription or without prescription (OTC medicines).
In addition to ensuring an accurate supply of appropriate products, His/her professional activities also covers counseling patients at the time of dispensing of both prescription and non-prescription medicines, medicines information to health professionals, patients and the general public, and participation in health promotion programs. He/she keeps contact with other health professionals in primary healthcare.

II. ROLE OF PHARMACIST IN THE COMMUNITY PHARMACY

            The main roles of the community pharmacists are described below:

            1. Processing of prescription

             The pharmacist verifies the prescription, checks the patient’s medication record before dispensing the prescription (when such records are kept in the pharmacy), ensure that the quantities of medication are dispensed accurately, and decides whether the medication should be handed to the patient with appropriate counseling by a pharmacist.

            2. Care of patients

            The pharmacist seeks to collect information about the patient’s medicine history, clarify the patient’s understanding of the given dose, method of administration and advises the patient of medicine-related precautions and contra-indication.

            3. Monitoring of medicine utilization

            The pharmacist can participate in arrangement for monitoring the utilization of medicines such as practice research projects and schemes to analyze prescriptions for the monitoring of adverse drug reactions.

            4. Extemporaneous preparation and small-scale manufacture of medicines

             Pharmacists everywhere continue to prepare medicines in the pharmacy. This enables them to adapt the formulation of a medicine to the needs of an individual patient. In some developed and developing countries, pharmacists engage in the small-scale manufacture of medicines, which must accord with good manufacturing practice (GMP) guidelines.

            5. Responding to symptoms of minor ailments

            The pharmacist is able to advice on a variety of symptoms to the public and refers to the medicinal practitioner for more inquiries when any symptom was indicated. If the symptoms relate to a self-limiting minor ailment, the pharmacist can supply a non-prescription medicine with advice to consult a medical practitioner if the symptoms persist for more than a few days. Alternatively, the pharmacist may give advice without supplying medicine.

           

6. Health promotion

The pharmacist can take part in health promotion campaigns, locally and nationally, on a wide range of health-related topics and particularly on medicine-related topics (e.g. rational use of medicines, alcohol abuse, discouragement of medicine use during pregnancy) or topics concerned with other health problems (diarrhea, tuberculosis, leprosy, AIDS) and family planning. They may also take part in the education of local community group in health promotion and in campaigns on disease prevention such as the Expanded Program on Immunization.

Reference: The roles of pharmacist in the healthcare system. By WHO