Public health competencies for pharmacists: A scoping review

Abstract

Background: Pharmacists are increasingly called to integrate population health approaches into their role. Public health knowledge and skills are recommended to be incorporated into the pharmacy curricula and professional development to enable competence of pharmacists in this area. Aim: To describe the competencies required by pharmacists to contribute to the public health of populations. Methods: A scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature discussing competencies in both pharmacy and public health was conducted. Competencies were extracted into a matrix of pharmacy and public health competencies and inductive coding of themes was undertaken. Results: Analysis of 58 papers showed important themes of professionalism, communication and collaboration with communities and other health professionals. Pharmacist services providing health promotion, screening and disease prevention should be directed at community needs. Evolution of pharmacy competencies in global health, health informatics and disaster management are current topics. Conclusion: A public health perspective in all pharmacy competency domains may assist pharmacists to understand their responsibility in improving the health and wellbeing of communities and ensure the profession has a positive impact on local, national and global health indicators.

A systems approach to the perceptions of the integration of public health into pharmacy practice: A qualitative study

“…Participants with strong interests in public health contributed to the recognition of needed developments in the pharmacy profession, but may have limited the breadth of opinion due to self-selection bias. Although a one-page summary of a literature review 26 was provided to participants prior to interviews, a definition of public health and pharmacy was not given, and this allowed for broad discussions according to each participant's interests.…”

“…An interview guide was developed to encompass themes identified by a scoping literature review previously conducted by the investigators. 26 Questions centred around gathering views on the contribution of pharmacists to public health, barriers and enablers and the competencies needed (Appendix 1). A one-page summary of the literature review 26 (see Appendix 2) was distributed to participants prior to their interview to provide background information.…”

Assessing Self-Reported Core Competencies of Public Health Practitioners in Lebanon Using the WHO-ASPHER Validated Scale: A Pilot Study

“…Consequently, strengthening public health capacity and services has become a global priority [9,26,[47][48][49], and the core competencies in the public health framework allow professionals to reach this goal [26] and help identify the essential individual attributes required to ful ll their role [50,51]. Indeed, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and other academic, governmental and non-governmental institutions emphasized the need to enhance academic preparedness to meet the 21st -century public health challenges [49,[52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60].…”

Assessing self-reported core competencies of public health practitioners in Lebanon using the WHO-ASPHER validated scale: a pilot study

“…Consequently, strengthening public health capacity and services has become a global priority [9,26,[49][50][51], and the core competencies in the public health framework allow professionals to reach this goal [26] and help identify the essential individual attributes required to fulfill their role [52,53]. Indeed, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and other academic, governmental and non-governmental institutions emphasized the need to enhance academic preparedness to meet the 21 st -century public health challenges [51,[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62].…”