The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic affected the entire world and contributed to severe health and economic consequences. A safe and effective vaccine is a tool allowing the pandemic to be controlled. Hence, we aimed to conduct a survey on vaccinations against seasonal influenza and COVID-19 in Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. We also evaluated societal attitudes towards influenza and COVID-19 vaccinations. Materials and methods: We conducted the study between December 2020 and May 2021. At the time, the countries subject to the research were between the second and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used an anonymous and self-designed questionnaire comprised of eleven closed-ended questions and a short socio-demographic section. The questionnaire was administered by direct contact or mainly (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) by e-mail or Facebook. Finally, we included 2753 answers from Poland, 1852 from Ukraine, and 213 from Lithuania. Results: Between 61% (Poland) and 72.9% (Ukraine) of the study participants have never been vaccinated against influenza (p < 0.05). Totals of 67.6% of the respondents in Poland, 73.71% in Lithuania, and 29.5% in Ukraine responded that they want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 (p < 0.05). Vaccine hesitancy was mainly related to worries about its side effects. There were also vaccine non-adopters in the study. In Ukraine, 67% of the respondents were clearly opposed to mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, compared to 41.7% in Poland and 30.99% in Lithuania (p < 0.05). Conclusions: There are still many people who present vaccine hesitancy or are opposed to vaccines. Thus, societal education about vaccination and the pandemic is crucial. Vaccine hesitancy or refusal might be related to vaccine origin. Shortages of influenza vaccines made it impossible to vaccinate those who were determined to be vaccinated. There is room for discussion of mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.
In 2017, a regulation referred to as “pharmacies for the pharmacists” was implemented in Poland, and Ukraine is going to implement a similar act of law. The study was to collect Ukrainian pharmacists’ opinions about the upcoming market regulation and to compare their views with opinions obtained from Polish pharmacists collected two years following the amendment of this legislation. The study was conducted in Poland and Ukraine using a self-designed questionnaire. Of 2162 questionnaires received, 2043 were included in the study (1623 from Ukraine and 420 from Poland). Ukrainian pharmacists (76.8%) feared that medicine prices would increase. Moreover, they presented concerns related to poorer access to pharmaceuticals and reduced turnovers of pharmacies. Two years after the market regulation, 55.23% of Polish pharmacists pointed out that none of the fears reported in Ukraine were observed in Poland. However, 33.10% revealed that market regulation led to “a reduction in the number of pharmacies”. Ukrainian pharmacists are afraid of community pharmacies’ regulation. Polish pharmacists, however, have not observed such problems during the two years following the market regulation. The only noticeable market change in Poland was the reduced number of pharmacies.
As members of a public trust profession, pharmacists are the most accessible medical team members. Therefore, every pharmacist must know the scope of their professional roles (PR) and professional functions (PF). The study aimed to detail the major PR into a pooled set of PF. The research materials were the provisions of the World Health Organization, the International Pharmaceutical Federation, and scientific works on the PR of pharmacists. Methods of critical analysis, concretization, functional decomposition, and scientific generalization were used. As a result of detailing the 10 main PR according to the “ten-star pharmacist” concept for each, a combined set of partial PFs of the pharmacist was obtained. The decomposition takes into account the principle of complexity limitation, which allowed three to six partial PF for the respective PR to be obtained, namely: three PFs for a life-long-learner, five PFs for a caregiver, a decision-maker, a teacher, a leader, a researcher, an entrepreneur, and an agent of positive change, six PFs for a communicator and a manager. Thus, due to the decomposition of each of the 10 main PR of the pharmacist into three or six corresponding partial PFs, we received a multifunctional verbal model of difficult to organize, professional activities, which is identified by a total of 50 PFs. The importance of using this model in formulating professional competencies and learning outcomes of educational programs for pharmacists is emphasized.
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