OSTEOARTHRITIS and joint pain symptoms frequently present in pharmacy, but despite their crucial role, pharmacists also face "significant barriers to becoming integrated within the multidisciplinary team", according to a feature article in the Pharmaceutical Journal.
Pharmacists are being called upon to expand their scope of practice, fill the gaps in their knowledge, invest time in counselling patients and communicate with the multidisciplinary team.
These demands put huge time pressures on already stretched pharmacists, an outcome of their high accessibility as health professionals.
John Kielly, Clinical Pharmacist and researcher at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, said, "The major barriers seem to be lack of confidence or training, time and reimbursement, and liability concerns.
"Expanded scope for pharmacists is great, but the pharmacists' working conditions must allow them to incorporate these activities into their daily practice," Kielly said.
"Right now I think there is a disconnect there, in that we are asking and giving permission for community pharmacists to do more and more, but their work environment is not changing to allow for this to happen in a positive and productive way."
Kielly and his team have developed a tool to support pharmacists - journals.sagepub.com.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 22 Feb 19
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