The raison d'etre for the community pharmacy and the community pharmacist in Sweden: A qualitative interview study

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    Abstract

    Community pharmacies are balancing between business (selling medicines and other
    products) and healthcare (using the pharmacists’ knowledge in order to improve drug utilization).
    This balance could be affected by regulations decided upon by politicians, but also influenced by
    others. The aim of this study was to explore important stakeholders’ views on community pharmacy
    and community pharmacists in Sweden. The method used was that of semi-structured qualitative
    interviews. Political, professional, and patient organization representatives were interviewed.
    The results show that informants who are pharmacists or representatives of a professional pharmacist
    organization generally have a healthcare-centered view on community pharmacy/pharmacists.
    However, different views on how this orientation should be performed were revealed, ranging
    from being specialists to dealing with uncomplicated tasks. Political organization representatives
    generally had a more business-oriented view, where competition in the market was believed to be the
    main driving force for development. A third dimension in which competition was not stressed also
    emerged; that community pharmacies should primarily distribute medicines. This dimension was
    most prevalent among the political and patient organization representatives. One conclusion to be
    drawn is that no stakeholder seemed to have a clear vision or was willing to take the lead for the
    development of the community pharmacy sector.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number3
    JournalPharmacy
    Volume4
    Issue number1
    Pages (from-to)1-10
    Number of pages10
    ISSN2226-4787
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Mar 2016

    Keywords

    • community pharmacy
    • regulation
    • pharmacy policy
    • pharmacy reform
    • legislation
    • Sweden

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