Something to celebrate
Last week, with the continued generous support of GlaxoSmithKline, The Journal was able to celebrate the 12th annual Pharmaceutical Care Awards.
In previous years, the awards have been divided into three categories:
community care, hospital care and shared care but this year, following
a number of queries in the past two years from would-be entrants not
sure where their projects should be placed, all entries were considered
in one group. Two of the judges remarked that they believed the general
quality of entries had increased markedly and that this year’s
batch was the best ever. (The report on this year’s celebrations
starts on p12.)
There could be a number of reasons for the increase in quality. As more
pharmacists and other health care professionals grasp the potential benefits
of pharmaceutical care, more of them are trying out new ways of working
and developing projects — pharmaceutical care is no longer a rare
commodity. In addition, as the Government places more emphasis on supporting
patients with chronic diseases — many of whom are prescribed complicated
drug regimens — high quality pharmaceutical care increasingly looks
less like an option and more an essential part of a patient’s total
care package. And, maybe, a small contribution has been made by the awards
themselves. Over the years we have noted that many of the winning or
commended projects can be replicated in other communities for patients
suffering from a similar disease or condition, or adapted for the care
of patients with quite different chronic conditions.
However, for pharmaceutical care to take off in a big way — particularly
in community pharmacy — there is still much to be done. The keynote
speaker at the awards conference, Foppe van Mil from the Netherlands,
provocatively suggested that many community pharmacists have neither
the time, the space nor the money to be able to carry out pharmaceutical
care effectively. Furthermore, the latest issue of Prescribing & Medicines
Management (see centre
pull-out section) reveals that the early pharmacist
supplementary prescribers working in the community are finding it an
uphill struggle to reach their full potential for similar reasons. In
addition, they are having to surmount the barrier of access to patient
records. A great deal, it seems, depends on the new pharmacy contract
to resolve these issues, both for the development of pharmaceutical care
and to ensure supplementary prescribing does not stall in community pharmacy
even before it really gets into gear.
Nevertheless, the Pharmaceutical Care Awards prove there is much to celebrate
in pharmacy. We salute all those people who entered this year and encourage
others to start planning now for future years.
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