Pharmacy practice
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In Thailand, pharmacists are responsible for all activities to ensure access to medicines throughout pharmaceutical supply chain. Competency framework (CF) is an important guidance for professional development and workforce planning. ⋯ Regarding the professional goal to evolve pharmacists from generalists to specialists for providing higher quality of professional services, the pharmacists are required to demonstrate general competencies and service-specific competencies. The findings serve as the need-based evidence for developing a national CF for pharmacists in Thailand.
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This study aimed to evaluate the content available on Facebook pharmacy groups in Jordan regarding the perception of the pharmacists' role during the coronavirus pandemic in Jordan. ⋯ Pharmacists perceived their role as a positive role during the coronavirus pandemic. Not only they took responsibilities for their daily services during the crises, but they took additional responsibilities to assure patient safety and satisfaction.
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Within a crippling economic context and a rapidly evolving healthcare system, pharmacists in Lebanon are striving to promote their role in primary care. Community pharmacists, although held in high esteem by the population, are not recognised as primary health care providers by concerned authorities. They are perceived as medication sellers. ⋯ However, OPL faces a major internal political challenge: its governing body, which is reelected every three years, holds absolute powers in changing strategies for the three-year mandate, without program continuation beyond each mandate. Within this context, we recommend the implementation of a strategic plan to integrate pharmacy in primary health centers, promoting the public health aspect of the profession and taking into account of critical health issues and the changing demographics and epidemiological transition of the Lebanese population. Unless the proposed blueprint in this paper is adopted, the profession is unfortunately condemned to disappear in the current political, economic and health-related Lebanese context.
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Although a highly common practice in hospital care, tablet splitting can cause dose variation and reduce drug stability, both of which impair drug therapy. ⋯ The high percentage of unnecessary tablet splitting suggests that more regular, rational updates of the hospital's list of standard medicines are needed. Also, inappropriate splitting behavior suggests the need to develop tablets with functional scores.
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To determine the accuracy, variability, and weight uniformity of tablet subdivision techniques utilized to divide the tablets of five drug products that are commonly prescribed for use as half tablets in Jordan. ⋯ The tablet cutter performed better than the other subdivision techniques used. It produced half tablets that passed the weight uniformity test for four drug products out of the five.