BACKGROUND There is scant knowledge of the involvement of developing country pharmacists in mental healthcare. The objectives of this study were: to examine the existing role of Ghanaian community and hospital pharmacists in the management of mental illness, and to determine the barriers that hinder pharmacists' involvement in mental healthcare in Ghana. METHOD A respondent self-completion qu...

BACKGROUND Several countries recently reassessed the roles of drug prescribing and dispensing, either by enlarging pharmacists' rights to prescribe (e.g. the US and the United Kingdom) or by limiting physicians' rights to dispense (e.g. Taiwan and South Korea). While integrating the two roles might increase supply and be convenient for patients, concern is that drug mark-ups incite providers to...

In the dispensing process, powdered medicines are often blended with diluents or different kinds of powder. With blending, the mass percent of the medicine in the mixture is unknown until the active pharmaceutical ingredient is determined with techniques such as spectroscopy and chromatography. However, pharmacists need to confirm the exact blending ratio of the dispensing mixture in pharmacies...

The pharmacy profession has for the greater part of four decades been associated with dispensing activities and product reimbursement. This has hindered the ability of pharmacists to evolve their roles in their respective sites of care. Payment reform efforts that create an outcomes marketplace offer an opportunity for professional transformation.

Medication errors are especially likely when health professionals engage in multiple tasks within a short time span. This situation occurs repeatedly in hospitals when pharmacists and technicians load unit-dose carts, and when nurses administer medications. Unit-dose carts are prepared daily, often manually, by technicians and then checked by pharmacists. These carts, containing thousands of pa...

OBJECTIVES The physical act of giving medication to patients to administer away from a health care setting, dispensing, is normally performed by pharmacists. Dispensing of medication by physicians is a neglected patient safety issue, and having observed considerable variation in practice, the lead author sought to explore this issue further. A literature review yielded zero articles pertaining ...

In order to improve the overall safety of chemotherapy, safety-protecting net was established for the whole process from prescribing by physicians, transcribing by nurses, dispensing by pharmacists to administering by nurses. The information system was used to check and monitor whole process of administration and related sheets were computerized to simplify the paperwork. Keywords—Chemotherapy,...