The Changing Face of Community Pharmacy Practice : Increasing time for our priorities

Abstract

The thesis describes the added value of the community pharmacist in the Netherlands from a societal perspective in the context of cognitive pharmaceutical services (CPS). However, at the same time, the thesis describes that community pharmacists are limited in their ability to spend the available time on CPS. At the same time, much of the community pharmacist's available time is spent on other activities, for which the expertise of the community pharmacist is not required. At the same time, the majority of community pharmacists regard CPS as the most important activity. In addition, patients see a role for the community pharmacist in the context of CPS provision and the availability of CPS to patients is experienced as important. At the same time, preferences have been identified with patients regarding the further development of different CPS related activities (such as point-of-care-testing and prescribing medicines for minor ailments). In this thesis, these findings are placed within a broader perspective and is discussed with other current topics within community pharmacy, such as the reimbursement model, education and training for community pharmacists and the multidisciplinary collaboration with other healthcare professionals. This thesis calls for the creation of the right conditions for the community pharmacist to be able to focus more on CPS, as this benefits society the most.