Collaboration between Primary Care Pharmacists and General Practitioner Teams: Recent Developments, Challenges and Countermeasures

Abstract

With the transformation of the role of pharmacists, the model and content of pharmacy services in primary care delivered by them have changed significantly, and they may play a greater role in the collaboration with general practitioner teams. This paper elaborated the content and model of collaboration between primary care pharmacists and general practitioner teams globally, analyzed the current effects of collaboration on improving clinical outcomes of patients, saving medical expenses and standardizing rational use of medicines, and summarized the challenges and barriers to collaboration, including general practitioners' low willingness to collaborate, patients' lack of confidence in the professional competence of primary pharmacists, barriers to role conversion of primary care pharmacists, additional medical costs, and imperfect infrastructure, etc. In view of the above barriers, this paper proposed five coping strategies, including clearly defining the responsibility of pharmacists in general practitioner teams, developing the incentive system and improving the management of fund, enhancing the training for community pharmacists and constructing the position-specific competencies evaluation system, strengthening the communication and mutual trust between general practitioners and pharmacists, and optimizing the pattern of collaboration. All of these provide theoretical reference and strategic support for the development of the collaboration between primary care pharmacists and general practitioners teams in China.

Keywords

• primary care pharmacists|general practitioner teams|physician-pharmacist collaborative management|community pharmacy services