2024-04-15 13:45:57
The main points of the regulations that guarantee the basic rights of patients as beneficiaries of pharmaceutical benefits are included.
ABC
This year the World Health Organization (WHO) commemorates World Health Day with the motto ‘My health, my right’, which wants to raise awareness of the right of everyone, everywhere, to have access to health services. The General Council of Pharmaceutical Colleges and the Platform of Patient Associations (POP), coinciding with this celebration, have prepared a Decalogue of Patients’ Rights in Community Pharmacies.
This document includes the main points of the regulations that guarantee the basic rights of patients as beneficiaries of pharmaceutical benefits. Legislation that includes both the rights of citizens associated with the pharmacy as a health establishment, and the healthcare services they receive from pharmacists, as health professionals.
A document that highlights the importance of care work that is offered from community pharmacies and the fundamental role that pharmacists play in their provision within the health system to improve the health and quality of life of citizens.
For Jesús Aguilar, president of the General Council of Pharmaceutical Colleges, «the Community Pharmacy is subject to solid legislation to benefit the service that citizens receive; regulations that guarantee close, safe and quality access to medicine, thanks to the 22,220 community pharmacies and the health advice offered by the more than 56,000 pharmacists who carry out their healthcare work in them.
Furthermore, “it is legislation that is facilitating the provision of pharmaceutical services, a path towards a more caring and social pharmacy that we have already undertaken and that society itself demanded of us, as a natural evolution of that enormous accessibility and relationship of trust that has always existed between pharmacist and patient, which places community pharmacy, frequently, in the first place they go to. patients when they have a health problem or simply have doubts,” said Aguilar.
The president of the General Council of Colleges of Pharmacists concluded by highlighting that “having prepared this decalogue of rights together with the Platform of Patient Organizations is especially important for us because we know that a patient who is more aware of their health rights will also be a more patient.” empowered that, by relying on your pharmacist, you will have more ability to manage your illness and protect your own health.”
Carina Escobar, president of the Platform of Patient Organizations (POP), highlights that “it is very important that citizens and especially chronic patients know their rights and this decalogue makes them visible in the area of the pharmacy office. Pharmacists perform a Fundamental work in healthcare and especially with everything related to the safe use of the medication. From the POP we appreciate the enormous daily work that the professionals of the community pharmacy offices do in providing care to patients and their families.”
Specifically, every day 2.3 million citizens are served by one of the 56,502 community pharmacists in the Spanish pharmacy network, which is the largest and closest in Europe, with 4.7 pharmacies per 10,000 inhabitants. Of the 22,220 community pharmacies, 4,400 of them are located in towns of less than 5,000 inhabitants and 864 of these in towns that have even less than 800 inhabitants, which makes community pharmacists, often, the only health professional available to serve the population in the locality.
Regarding the attention provided, the community pharmacies of the different autonomies offer on average five pharmaceutical care services that go beyond dispensing, among which services such as personalized dosing, monitoring and therapeutic adherence, screening for the detection of diseases such as HIV, colon cancer or that of the cervix; and smoking cessation, needle exchange or methadone maintenance programs.
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