Medicine shortages – A study of community pharmacies in Finland

The reasons behind medicine shortages from the perspective of pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical wholesalers in Finland

“…Medicine shortages cause several issues related to patient care and patient safety [6–16]. They may result in medication errors, inefficiency in medical care, and side effects [7–12, 14].…”

“…Furthermore, patients may suffer from delays or may not receive the recommended treatment at all [9–10]. Shortages may also add to the workload of physicians and pharmacists [6, 9–10, 12–14] and increase the cost of medical care [9–11]. …”

“…Research data on medicine shortages is still limited [4–11, 15], although some research findings have been published on the frequency of medicine shortages [6, 9, 15]. According to a Finnish study, 80 percent of community pharmacies faced medicine shortages daily or almost daily during the 27-day study period [6].…”

“…According to a Finnish study, 80 percent of community pharmacies faced medicine shortages daily or almost daily during the 27-day study period [6]. In another report, 63 percent of hospital pharmacists reported medicine shortages on a weekly, or even daily, basis during the past year [15].…”

“…Information on the frequency of shortages is, however, fragmented and is mainly presented at summit meetings and in reports of federations in the pharmaceutical field [4–5, 8, 11]. In addition, there are some earlier research publications on the impacts of shortages on patient safety, patient care and increased workload of health care professionals [6–8, 10, 13, 15], demonstrating that the negative effects of shortages have been recognized.…”