BACKGROUND Health workforce planning is especially important in a setting of political, social, and economic uncertainty. Portuguese community pharmacists are experiencing such conditions as well as increasing patient empowerment, shortage of primary care physicians, and primary health care reforms. This study aims to design three future scenarios for Portuguese community pharmacists, recognizi...

BACKGROUND Pharmacy support-staff (pharmacy technicians, dispensers and Medicines Counter Assistants) support the delivery of pharmaceutical and retail functions of the pharmacy. Workflow is supervised and at times dependent upon the pharmacist's presence. Policy makers and pharmacy's representative bodies are seeking to extend the community pharmacist's role including requiring the pharmacist ...

Using a qualitative phenomenological approach, the purpose of this study was to examine characteristics of the pharmacist-diabetic patient relationship that have the potential to lead to behavioral changes and improved clinical outcomes. Bandura's self-efficacy model served as the theoretical framework. Interviews were conducted with 12 participants diagnosed with diabetes regarding their lived...

pon successful completion of this article, the pharmacist should be able to: 1. describe the status of literacy in the United States 2. define functional health literacy and its relationship to health outcomes. 3. describe how to assess low health literacy in community pharmacy patients. 4. address low health literacy in the community pharmacy setting through patient counseling. 5. address low ...

Retail pharmacies provide essential services to residents of rural areas and serve many communities as the sole provider of pharmacist services. Losing the only retail pharmacy within a rural community (census designated city), and within a 10 mile radius based on driving distance ("sole community pharmacy"), may affect access to prescription and over-the-counter drugs and, in some cases, leave...

A 77-year-old female with recurrent non-small-cell lung cancer presented to a hospital outpatient clinic with tremor, weakness, inability to coordinate motor movements, and confusion. It was suspected that the symptoms were due to possible central nervous system metastases; however, a CT scan of her head was unremarkable. The lung clinic liaison pharmacist took a medication history from the pat...