Different models of pharmaceutical services and care in primary healthcare clinics in the Eastern Cape, South Africa: Challenges and opportunities for pharmacy practice

Abstract

Background: Primary health care (PHC) re-engineering forms a crucial part of South Africa’s National Health Insurance (NHI), with pharmaceutical services and care being crucial to treatment outcomes. However, owing to a shortage of pharmacists within PHC clinics, task-shifting of the dispensing process to pharmacist’s assistants and nurses is common practice. The implications of this task-shifting process on the provision of pharmaceutical services and care remains largely unstudied.Aim: The study aimed to explore the pharmacist-based, pharmacist’s assistant-based and nurse-based dispensing models within the PHC setting.Setting: The Nelson Mandela Bay Health District, South Africa.Methods: A mixed methods approach was utilised comprising of Phase 1: a pharmaceutical services audit to analyse pharmaceutical service provision and Phase 2: semi-structured interviews to describe the pharmaceutical care provision within each dispensing model thematically.Results: Pharmaceutical services partially fulfilled minimum standards within all models, however, challenges exist that limit the quality of these services. Phase 2 showed that the provision of pharmaceutical care within all models was restricted by context-related constraints, thus patient-centred activities to underpin pharmaceutical services were limited.Conclusion: Although pharmaceutical services may have been available for all models, compromised quality of these services impacted overall quality of care. Limited pharmaceutical care provision was evident within each dispensing model. The results raised concerns about the current utilisation of pharmacy personnel, including the pharmacist, within the PHC setting. Further opportunities exist, if constraints allow, for the pharmacist to contribute to better patient-centred care.

Key performance indicators for pharmaceutical services: A systematic review

“… 47 Most KPIs were developed for clinical services. For years, the pharmacy profession was focused simply on the supply of medicines rather than pharmaceutical care-related roles 48 and the findings highlight the increasing role of pharmacists in direct patient care. However, this finding reflects a gap in the availability of studies that developed indicators for other pharmaceutical services, such as the supply of medicines and drug dispensing.…”

Service learning in pharmacy: implementation of tuberculosis screening by second-year pharmacy students in primary health care facilities in Cape Town, South Africa

“…Pharmacy Education 21(1) 203 -215 212 pharmacist nor offer services from a formal pharmacy (Bobbins et al, 2020). It is the hope of the School that the development and expansion of this programme may add to the normalisation of the presence of pharmacists in public primary health care clinics beyond the pharmacy in a patient-centred role (as opposed to a product centred one) that overlaps and compliments that of the nurse in primary health care.…”

Pharmacist Assistants’ role in medicine supply management at a primary healthcare setting

“…Nurses are unable to cope with the additional function of medicine supply management because of the increased workload. In a study conducted in one province in South Africa, nurses reported a high workload at primary healthcare clinics where dispensing services had to be incorporated into an already time-constrained patient consultation schedule (Bobbins, Burton & Fogarty 2020 ).…”