E-DRUG: Innovative community pharmacy models to save a dying profession sought
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Dear E-druggers,
I would like to seek ideas or successful examples of a social enterprise model of community pharmacy out there!
I live in a well developed country in Asia, where majority of the funding for healthcare is in the public sector is in hospitals.
Pharmacists roles and career are not like the UK, Australia or US. We only have 150 graduates per year yet the employment rate is low.
We do not practice separation of dispensing of pharmaceuticals in the private sector as we have many many private GPs practicing here people access them due to their lowish costs and convenience but patients' costs are all out of pocket.. The dilemma that the Irish pharmacists were fighting against a few months back its THE issue here.
Because the healthcare system composition is in general not the same as the countries mentioned above together with health believes and literacy, power of doctors, issues in the community pharmacy sector etc
I believe that here we need innovation to solve the issue instead of trying to copy and paste another existing "gold standard" here. I work a lot in the community with NGOs (volunteering) and promoting the profession to pockets of people in the community together with a few other young pharmacists trying to move in a more positive direction.
I have started looking at a few ideas but it would be great if any experts out there can share any examples or thoughts? Would be greatly appreciated.
Best
Sally Ho MPharm MPH
Hong Kong
Sally Ho <siuluen.sally@gmail.com>