The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7259 p131
26 July 2003

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Not an easy read but worth buying

'Managing the patient-centered pharmacy' by Harry P. Hagel and John Rovers. Pp xvii+253. Price $45. Washington DC: American Pharmaceutical Association; 2002. ISBN 1 58212 010 2

The future of pharmacy practice lies in the delivery of pharmaceutical care. Although committed to the philosophy, few practitioners actually succeed in developing professional patient care services. This book provides guidance on developing an infrastructure to support the practice of pharmaceutical care by the application of strategic planning and business concepts.

The book is structured into 10 chapters written by internationally recognised experts from America, Australia and Canada. The book raises four key questions: Where are you now? Where do you want to be? How will you reach your destination? How will you know you have arrived? Unfortunately by chapter 10 I knew I had not yet reached my destination.

Chapter 1 focused on the first question; it was well written and applicable to various health care systems and practice sites. Chapter 2 attempted to deal with the second question by adopting a case study approach, which simply did not work. Although I found the choice of names for the pharmacist (Eric Benaround) and technician (Teresa Technique) irritating it was the use of the one case study throughout that limited the usefulness of this chapter. Chapters 3 to 7 answered the third question. Of particular note was chapter 3 on "interdisciplinary patient care" in which the author made an excellent case for a team approach to the delivery of pharmaceutical care — a partnership involving the patient, pharmacist, physician and other members of the health care team. The final question was answered in chapters 8 to 10, which successfully integrated patient outcomes, financial data and quality improvement systems.

The book is primarily aimed at managers and directors and is well indexed throughout. The chapters on "interdisciplinary patient care" and "managing patient outcome data" will be of great interest to practitioners and students. It is worth buying the book for these chapters alone.

Overall it was not an easy read, perhaps because it attempted to do too much. Hence I did not reach my final destination but learnt much on the journey — I recommend the book to you.

Clare Mackie

Professor Clare Mackie is professor of pharmaceutical care and head of the centre for partnerships in medicines for health at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen