Farm Comunitarios. 2015 Sep 30;7(3):3-6. doi: 10.5672/FC.2173-9218.(2015/Vol7).003.01

Vaccination from a community pharmacy viewpoint: An opportunity for the healthcare system

Magro M1
1. Farmacéutica coordinadora del grupo de Inmunología de SEFAC
Magro M. Vaccination from a community pharmacy viewpoint: An opportunity for the healthcare system. Farm Comunitarios. 2015 Sep 30;7(3):3-6. doi: 10.5672/FC.2173-9218.(2015/Vol7).003.01
Abstract : 

When you start a career in the field of family and community pharmacy, few of us lay down the importance deserved by vaccines as medicines dispensed in this field. I do not wish to say that rigor is lacking in aspects such as their correct maintenance and storage or special care is not taken to maintaining the cold chain with the purpose of ensuring that when it is administered to the patient it arrives in perfect condition and is effective. However, is dispensing the same as when we are dealing with other drugs with which we are more familiar to treat chronic or more prevalent diseases? I would venture to say no. We limit ourselves to "delivering the vaccine", and tell the patient to keep it in the fridge (not a freezer) until it is administered in a public or private health center, which does not currently include community pharmacy in Spain. Are we educating patients in healthcare correctly and do we offer follow up after vaccination? In most cases the answer is, once again, no. We focus primarily on notifying possible adverse effects after vaccination. And what about vaccination of the traveler? Here we can state that we are progressing more over offering advice. Why do we act in this way against this kind of drug? Put simply and from my individual point of view, because we lack information. We believe that this branch of healthcare does not form part of our professional activity and we take it as given that it falls more under the scope of public healthcare, health centers and nurses than ourselves. We should consider a change in regard to how to tackle vaccination from a community pharmacy perspective.

Editor: © SEFAC. Sociedad Española de Farmacia Clínica, Familiar y Comunitaria. 
Copyright© SEFAC. Sociedad Española de Farmacia Clínica, Familiar y Comunitaria. This article is available from url https://www.farmaceuticoscomunitarios.org/. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en

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