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Indian pharmacists employed in pharmacy chains need to widen their knowledge base in the area of medicine management which includes patient counselling along with drug handling and storage methodology, according to PS Bhagavan, former deputy director, pharmacy, Karnataka department of health and family welfare.
Going by the demand for pharmacists in the healthcare space, there is a need to advance training skills to move away from the routine drug dispensing and be far more accountable in patient care with medication management methods, he added.
The job of the pharmacist does not end with dispensing or selling medicine. It covers careful assessment of prescriptions, lab report, prepare a patient profile and advisory on medication management. This should be followed up with patient counselling. This is the typical service of community pharmacists, said Bhagavan who is also the former registrar Karnataka State Pharmacy Council.
The face-to-face contact time between the doctor and patient on an average is hardly three to five minutes whereas the treatment duration could extend from one day to several months.
The patient is left to fend himself to manage his therapy with whatever he has understood during the said 3-5 minutes of interaction. “This being the reality one can understand why over 60 to 70 per cent of the patients are discontinuing medication midway, modify medicines on their own, changing the doctors and even coming to terms that their sickness just continues. An alarming aspect of this would be development of drug resistance. This is where a qualified pharmacist is much wanted because it is his domain to tackle the situation along with a medical professional,” he noted.
One of the most important challenges in the hospitals today is the need for a doctor to acknowledge a pharmacist’s sound knowledge on drugs. Once this becomes an accepted fact, the pharmacist will not be competing but coordinating with the medical experts in contributing to the patient care. In India, doctors in hospitals are only perceived as the ultimate expert to discuss about medication management. There is a need to ensure the acceptance that this advice could also be provided by the pharmacists who are trained in medication management. Once the hospitals recognises the role of pharmacists and experience perceivable positive patient outcomes in recovery, then patients will also be able to understand their expertise, said Bhagavan.
An awareness on this new role of the pharmacist in Indian hospitals would automatically create new job openings in the healthcare sector and the demand for competent candidates will be huge. “In the long run, in India, we could see the general public opting for healthcare setting with the community pharmacy services on similar lines that of the developed world. Since such initiatives have already started, we see the need for pharmacists to expand their know-how in medicine management,” noted Bhagavan.
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