European barriers to the implementation of pharmaceutical care

Abstract

Objective — To establish the perceived barriers to the implementation of pharmaceutical care into community pharmacy practice in different European countries and the relative importance of these barriers. Method — Structured interviews with representatives from national pharmacists' organisations or pharmaceutical care researchers from 11 European countries known to be actively attempting to implement pharmaceutical care. Respondents were asked to consider a list of 25 potential barriers to pharmaceutical care and to score the relative importance of each for their own country. Data were analysed to produce a European overview of barriers as well as inter‐country comparisons. Key findings — Lack of time and lack of money are major barriers for the implementation of pharmaceutical care in European countries. Many other barriers were identified, but their impact on the implementation of pharmaceutical care seems to differ markedly over Europe. No correlation was found between money and time as barriers. Some clusters of countries were identified with similar barrier patterns. Conclusion — Time and money are perceived to be major both in absolute and relative rankings. The European pharmaceutical associations need to pay attention to remuneration issues before attempting to implement pharmaceutical care in their countries. The results also show that pharmaceutical organisations need to work continuously to change attitudes among pharmacists. Important barriers have also been identified in the educational domain and changes in the European curriculae for pharmacy are therefore needed. Co‐operation between some countries on these issues would appear to be useful.

Barriers to the implementation of Pharmaceutical Care into the UAE community pharmacies

“…The results of the present study were compatible with European barriers to the implementation of pharmaceutical care [15] in their findings of lack time and trained staff. Moreover their findings showed that lack of remuneration has great effect in the progression of the practice.…”

“…Moreover their findings showed that lack of remuneration has great effect in the progression of the practice. Lack of pharmacists' time was also identified in many other studies [15,17,21,22] as the major barrier limiting pharmacists' provision of advance health services. However, other studies findings showed some differences.…”

“…The initial pool of barriers items were identified by previous studies [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Modifications were done to make it convenient with the UAE practice setting.…”

Community Pharmacists Attitude Towards Professional Practice in Penang, Malaysia

“…[20] They expressed a willingness to implement pharmaceutical care practice but identified a number of barriers for successful implementation. [21][22][23] When addressing inter/intra professional relationships activities, this study received the lowest scores and seem to be of least concerned by pharmacists among all professional activities. The results reflect the existence of some barriers to establishing such relationships in practice in the community setting.…”

Implementing an online pharmaceutical service using design science research

“…The causes for this have long been discussed within the profession and the reasons range from the lack of payment for these services to the professional inertia regarding the adoption of new forms of practice [50, 51]. Also, another barrier commonly cited has been the “lack of time” reported by pharmacists [52, 53]. Analyzing our results, there seems to exist a perception gap about pharmacists’ free time.…”