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Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters

Since 2007, community pharmacists in Canada have become increasingly involved in delivering Travel Health services, including the recommendation and administration of vaccines. This qualitative scoping survey examines some of the activities and opinions of those early pharmacist adopters delivering...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Thidrickson, Doug, Goodyer, Larry
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6631395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31035567
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020042
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author Thidrickson, Doug
Goodyer, Larry
author_facet Thidrickson, Doug
Goodyer, Larry
author_sort Thidrickson, Doug
collection PubMed
description Since 2007, community pharmacists in Canada have become increasingly involved in delivering Travel Health services, including the recommendation and administration of vaccines. This qualitative scoping survey examines some of the activities and opinions of those early pharmacist adopters delivering these services. A Survey Monkey free text questionnaire was emailed to pharmacists who were involved in delivering travel medicine services. 21 pharmacists responding represented seven Canadian provinces. Only 5 pharmacists estimated that they were seeing five or more patients a week on average. Amongst the challenges they faced the most quoted was lack of time when running a busy pharmacy (62%) a lack of prescribing authority, (52%), and lack of access to public health vaccines (52%). ‘Word of mouth’ was widely quoted as a means of developing the service, indicating a good patient satisfaction. Also expressed were the advantages of convenience in terms of being a ‘one stop shop’, ease of billing to insurance companies and convenient appointment times. There are a number of challenges which are still to be faced which may be resolved by further legislation allowing access to public health vaccines and more widespread prescribing rights. The relatively low level of consultations reported by some is of concern if those pharmacists are to maintain competence.
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spelling pubmed-66313952019-08-19 Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters Thidrickson, Doug Goodyer, Larry Pharmacy (Basel) Article Since 2007, community pharmacists in Canada have become increasingly involved in delivering Travel Health services, including the recommendation and administration of vaccines. This qualitative scoping survey examines some of the activities and opinions of those early pharmacist adopters delivering these services. A Survey Monkey free text questionnaire was emailed to pharmacists who were involved in delivering travel medicine services. 21 pharmacists responding represented seven Canadian provinces. Only 5 pharmacists estimated that they were seeing five or more patients a week on average. Amongst the challenges they faced the most quoted was lack of time when running a busy pharmacy (62%) a lack of prescribing authority, (52%), and lack of access to public health vaccines (52%). ‘Word of mouth’ was widely quoted as a means of developing the service, indicating a good patient satisfaction. Also expressed were the advantages of convenience in terms of being a ‘one stop shop’, ease of billing to insurance companies and convenient appointment times. There are a number of challenges which are still to be faced which may be resolved by further legislation allowing access to public health vaccines and more widespread prescribing rights. The relatively low level of consultations reported by some is of concern if those pharmacists are to maintain competence. MDPI 2019-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC6631395/ /pubmed/31035567 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020042 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Thidrickson, Doug
Goodyer, Larry
Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters
title Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters
title_full Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters
title_fullStr Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters
title_full_unstemmed Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters
title_short Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters
title_sort pharmacy travel health services in canada: experience of early adopters
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6631395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31035567
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020042
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