Scope of contemporary pharmacy practice: Roles, responsibilities, and functions of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians
http://japha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1043725
Community-based care
The flow of activities that is typically associated with medication management in a community pharmacy or ambulatory clinic practice is shown in Figure 3; it depicts a pharmacist’s responsibilities for the provision of direct patient care. New prescriptions for acute illness and refills of medications for chronic conditions are accompanied by a full medication (prescription and nonprescription) and allergy history. Pharmacists should conduct a health-literacy assessment and then provide individualized counseling, education, and “coaching” to ensure that the patient and/or the patient’s caregiver is aware of the identity of the product, the indications and directions for use, storage requirements, side effects, long-term toxicity, drug interactions, food interactions, and medication adherence factors.
Community pharmacy is the practice setting that the public primarily envisions when pharmacy practice is discussed. The provision of medication for ambulatory patients is the primary responsibility of community pharmacy practitioners and the volume will increase as a result of an aging population and the trend toward managing more acute conditions and acute exacerbations of chronic conditions in the ambulatory environment. The complexity and sophistication of the medications used in the ambulatory setting, coupled with the increasing number of ambulatory patients, suggests that pharmacists in community pharmacies will become an even more essential access point for acquisition of healthcare services. This trend will continue despite the fact that an increasing number of patients receive their medications and medication information from an institutional or health system-affiliated pharmacy or a pharmacy that is located within an organized primary care medical practice.
Pharmaceutical preparations—including prescription and nonprescription medications—play a vital role in improving patients’ quality of life. They are used to diagnose, cure, treat, or control medical conditions, prevent disease and ill-health, and eliminate or reduce symptoms.
This “scope of practice” for pharmacists was published by The American Pharmacist Association ( APhA).. Out of the entire – very lengthy paper – doing a word search for “diagnose” or “diagnosis” and only 5 occurrences appear all in reference to drugs/medications used in diagnosing disease states.
Not once is there a mention within a Pharmacist’s scope of practice is the diagnosing the pt’s disease state. So it would appear that the original DEA statue or the interpretation of that statue referring to the Pharmacist’s “corresponding responsibility” would strongly suggest that the DEA is holding Pharmacists to standard that is outside of their scope of practice.
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