The role of community pharmacy in local social issues cannot be ignored, according to Dr Carmen Pea, President of the International Pharmaceutical Federation, at the opening of the 76th World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the weekend.
"Pharmacists and other health care professionals need to be more concerned with continuity, integration of processes and socio-health coordination, which is an important but often forgotten role of community pharmacies," she said in her opening address.
Pea's focus was on people, namely patients and healthcare professionals.
"Today's patients have new demands. New needs. They are increasing in number and age.
"Many of our health systems were created in the 20th century for a society of patients with acute illnesses, but nowadays we live in a society of patients with chronic illnesses, many of whom require polymedication."
The new demands call upon pharmacists to fulfil homecare needs as well as general health care, along with self-medication non-prescription requirements, the FIP president said.
These approaches will benefit from policies "that enable cooperation and care coordination between health care professionals, with respect for their various functions, for the benefit of patients," Pea added.
Also important, she said, were non-health professionals such as hospital managers, lawyers and economists, all of whom are essential to building a new concept of health care.
Clinical records were another focus with a call for the system to follow patients, rather than patients following the "labyrinths of specialties and bureaucracy".
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