Pharmaceutical care in community pharmacies: practice and research in Denmark.

OBJECTIVE: To review the current status of Danish community pharmacy in both practice and research and discuss future trends. FINDINGS: Denmark has a social welfare system that provides health care, social services, and pensions to its population. Medical care and surgery are free. Prescription medicines are reimbursed by an average of 56%. Community pharmacies are privately owned, but the health authorities regulate drug prices and the number of pharmacies. At present, Denmark has 322 pharmacies, corresponding to 1 pharmacy per 16,700 inhabitants. All pharmacies provide prescription and over-the-counter products, advice about medicine use, dose dispensing, generic substitutions, and administration of individual reimbursement registers. Except for very simple processes, compounding is centralized at 3 pharmacies. Many pharmacies offer measurement of blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol, and 60% offer inhalation counseling, a reimbursed service. Research in pharmacy practice is well established and conducted primarily at universities and at Pharmakon A/S, which is owned by the Danish Pharmaceutical Association. DISCUSSION: Extended services in clinical pharmacy are priorities for all Danish pharmacy organizations. Reimbursement is sought at the national level, as well as from payers in the new local authority structures in Denmark. The trend in research focuses on collaborative health care, on developing and documenting the value of community pharmacy services, and on optimizing services and strengthening implementation. CONCLUSIONS: Denmark has few, but large, community pharmacies and a long tradition of research and development resulting in several well-documented cognitive and clinical services. However, few services are reimbursed and implementation is still a challenge.

Changing a profession, influencing community pharmacy.

The authors set out to describe the possible impact of the continuing education activities of the Community Pharmacy Section (CPS) of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) on the profession in the period from 1980 to 2002 (approximately the last two decades of the 20th century) by reviewing and interpreting documents of the Community Pharmacy Section of the International Pharmaceutical Federation. The educational activities of the CPS have resulted in a high level of satisfaction among the participants. The CPS has also coordinated international practice research and the dissemination of the concept of pharmaceutical care. Additionally, the section's activities have informed the members of national pharmaceutical associations about new concepts, and stimulated projects on the added value of pharmacy. There are reasons to believe that the activities have created agents of change. It seems that the activities of the section have had some effect, although the exact impact remains difficult to measure because no structured evaluation method has been applied from the beginning of the continuing education activities.