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Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures?

Community pharmacists are one of the most accessible healthcare professionals and are often served as the first point of contact when it comes to minor ailments and health advice. As such, community pharmacists can play a vital role in a country's response to various preventative and public hea...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hasan, Syed Shahzad, Kow, Chia Siang, Zaidi, Syed Tabish Razi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252013/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32387229
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2020.04.033
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author Hasan, Syed Shahzad
Kow, Chia Siang
Zaidi, Syed Tabish Razi
author_facet Hasan, Syed Shahzad
Kow, Chia Siang
Zaidi, Syed Tabish Razi
author_sort Hasan, Syed Shahzad
collection PubMed
description Community pharmacists are one of the most accessible healthcare professionals and are often served as the first point of contact when it comes to minor ailments and health advice. As such, community pharmacists can play a vital role in a country's response to various preventative and public health measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the essential nature of community pharmacy as a health service, community pharmacies are unlikely to shut down in any foreseeable lockdown scenario. It is therefore important to assess the preventative measure directives for community pharmacies that are in place to safeguard community pharmacy personnel from SARS-CoV-2 in the various parts of the world. Upon reviewing the recommendations of 15 selected countries across five continents (Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America, and Africa) on social distancing and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in community pharmacies, we found inconsistencies in the recommended social distance to be practiced within the community pharmacies. There were also varying recommendations on the use of PPE by the pharmacy personnel. Despite the differences in the recommendations, maintaining recommended social distance and the wearing of appropriate PPE is of utmost importance for healthcare workers, including community pharmacy personnel dealing with day-to-day patient care activities, though full PPE should be worn when dealing with suspected COVID-19 patients.
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spelling pubmed-72520132020-05-28 Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures? Hasan, Syed Shahzad Kow, Chia Siang Zaidi, Syed Tabish Razi Res Social Adm Pharm Article Community pharmacists are one of the most accessible healthcare professionals and are often served as the first point of contact when it comes to minor ailments and health advice. As such, community pharmacists can play a vital role in a country's response to various preventative and public health measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the essential nature of community pharmacy as a health service, community pharmacies are unlikely to shut down in any foreseeable lockdown scenario. It is therefore important to assess the preventative measure directives for community pharmacies that are in place to safeguard community pharmacy personnel from SARS-CoV-2 in the various parts of the world. Upon reviewing the recommendations of 15 selected countries across five continents (Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America, and Africa) on social distancing and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in community pharmacies, we found inconsistencies in the recommended social distance to be practiced within the community pharmacies. There were also varying recommendations on the use of PPE by the pharmacy personnel. Despite the differences in the recommendations, maintaining recommended social distance and the wearing of appropriate PPE is of utmost importance for healthcare workers, including community pharmacy personnel dealing with day-to-day patient care activities, though full PPE should be worn when dealing with suspected COVID-19 patients. Elsevier Inc. 2021-02 2020-05-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7252013/ /pubmed/32387229 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2020.04.033 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Hasan, Syed Shahzad
Kow, Chia Siang
Zaidi, Syed Tabish Razi
Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures?
title Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures?
title_full Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures?
title_fullStr Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures?
title_full_unstemmed Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures?
title_short Social distancing and the use of PPE by community pharmacy personnel: Does evidence support these measures?
title_sort social distancing and the use of ppe by community pharmacy personnel: does evidence support these measures?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252013/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32387229
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2020.04.033
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