Objective: The current article is aimed at identifying the best practice for counseling around depression in community and outpatient pharmacies, resulting in a draft guideline, proposing key steps and an algorithm for integration of community pharmacists into care for patients with depression. Methods: A literature review was performed followed by a detailed analysis, for the purpose of creation a short draft document used as a basis for creation of a guideline for pharmaceutical care for patients with depression. The technological scheme PRISMA flow diagram was applied. The paper is based on current knowledge, taking into consideration already published articles, guidelines, and recommendations about pharmaceutical care for patients with depression, giving a basis for further studies. Results: This paper includes two main sections: 1) depression – a short description of the main symptoms, risk factors and pharmacotherapy guidelines available in Bulgaria important for the purposes of ensuring qualitative community-based pharmaceutical care; and 2) the pharmacists’ role in providing high-quality care – the main aspects of pharmaceutical care for patients with depression with specific examples. Conclusion: The involvement of pharmacists in supporting depressive patients is crucial taking into account the specific characteristics of the pharmacological treatment: delayed onset of clinical results, risks in case of sudden pharmacotherapy abruption without physician consultation, multiple adverse drug reactions and drug–drug, drug–food and drug–alcohol interactions, etc. The current article could also be used as an initial document for creating a methodological guideline for providing pharmaceutical care services for patients with depression.

This paper presents the results of the second European Delphi round on the ranking of competences for pharmacy practice and compares these data to those of the first round already published. A comparison of the numbers of respondents, distribution by age group, country of residence, etc., shows that whilst the student population of respondents changed from Round 1 to 2, the populations of the professional groups (community, hospital and industrial pharmacists, pharmacists in other occupations and academics) were more stable. Results are given for the consensus of ranking and the scores of ranking of 50 competences for pharmacy practice. This two-stage, large-scale Delphi process harmonized and validated the Quality Assurance in European Pharmacy Education and Training (PHAR-QA) framework and ensured the adoption by the pharmacy profession of a framework proposed by the academic pharmacy community. The process of evaluation and validation of ranking of competences by the pharmacy profession is now complete, and the PHAR-QA consortium will now put forward a definitive PHAR-QA framework of competences for pharmacy practice.

PHAR-QA, funded by the European Commission, is producing a framework of competences for pharmacy practice. The framework is in line with the EU directive on sectoral professions and takes into account the diversity of the pharmacy profession and the on-going changes in healthcare systems (with an increasingly important role for pharmacists), and in the pharmaceutical industry. PHAR-QA is asking academia, students and practicing pharmacists to rank competences required for practice. The results show that competences in the areas of “drug interactions”, “need for drug treatment” and “provision of information and service” were ranked highest whereas those in the areas of “ability to design and conduct research” and “development and production of medicines” were ranked lower. For the latter two categories, industrial pharmacists ranked them higher than did the other five groups.

The objective of the PHAR-QA (Quality assurance in European pharmacy education and training) project was to investigate how competence-based learning could be applied to a healthcare, sectoral profession such as pharmacy. This is the first study on evaluation of competences from the pharmacists’ perspective using an improved Delphi method with a large number of respondents from all over Europe. This paper looks at the way in which hospital pharmacists rank the fundamental competences for pharmacy practice. European hospital pharmacists (n = 152) ranked 68 competences for pharmacy practice of two types (personal and patient care), arranged into 13 clusters. Results were compared to those obtained from community pharmacists (n = 258). Generally, hospital and community pharmacists rank competences in a similar way. Nevertheless, differences can be detected. The higher focus of hospital pharmacists on knowledge of the different areas of science as well as on laboratory tests reflects the idea of a hospital pharmacy specialisation. The difference is also visible in the field of drug production. This is a necessary competence in hospitals with requests for drugs for rare diseases, as well as paediatric and oncologic drugs. Hospital pharmacists give entrepreneurship a lower score, but cost-effectiveness a higher one than community pharmacists. This reflects the reality of pharmacy practice where community pharmacists have to act as entrepreneurs, and hospital pharmacists are managers staying within drug budgets. The results are discussed in the light of a “hospital pharmacy” specialisation.

This paper looks at the opinions of 241 European academics (who provide pharmacy education), and of 258 European community pharmacists (who apply it), on competences for pharmacy practice. A proposal for competences was generated by a panel of experts using Delphi methodology. Once finalized, the proposal was then submitted to a large, European-wide community of academics and practicing pharmacists in an additional Delphi round. Academics and community pharmacy practitioners recognized the importance of the notion of patient care competences, underlining the nature of the pharmacist as a specialist of medicines. The survey revealed certain discrepancies. Academics placed substantial emphasis on research, pharmaceutical technology, regulatory aspects of quality, etc., but these were ranked much lower by community pharmacists who concentrated more on patient care competences. In a sub-analysis of the data, we evaluated how perceptions may have changed since the 1980s and the introduction of the notions of competence and pharmaceutical care. This was done by splitting both groups into respondents < 40 and > 40 years old. Results for the subgroups were essentially statistically the same but with some different qualitative tendencies. The results are discussed in the light of the different conceptions of the professional identity of the pharmacist.

The purpose of the study was to assess the influence of pharmaceutical care on patients' knowledge, quality of life and blood pressure and to determine whether new type of pharmaceutical services changes the pharmacists' satisfaction and knowledge. Community pharmacies were randomly assigned to study and control group and pharmacists from both groups included patients with hypertension, who meet inclusion and exclusion criteria. Study group provided the pharmaceutical care (education, pharmacotherapy monitoring, detecting and solving drug related problems) for their patients, while the control group provided the standard pharmaceutical services (dispensing medicines with or without counseling). At the beginning and the end of the study pharmacists and patients filled in the knowledge test. Pharmacists fulfilled also satisfaction questionnaire. Survey data were collected from 28 and 56 patients from community pharmacies in study and control group respectively. At the last meeting the normal blood pressure achieved 79% and 55% patients in study and control group, respectively (p>0,05). The pharmaceutical care improved patients' knowledge about disease. Pharmacists from study group, who provided pharmaceutical care, had higher level of pharmacotherapy knowledge and professional satisfaction than the control group. Implementation of pharmaceutical care into the pharmacy practice benefits both, patients and pharmacists.