In Healthcare, unlike buses, it is not a good idea to be left behind. For many years now, the societies around us have understood that the pharmaceutical network is an invaluable support to improve the healthcare service for the population. Recently, Belgium joined the countries where pharmaceutical professionals can vaccinate the population in seasonal campaigns such as the flu or COVID-19.
Other states have gone further. In the United Kingdom, the pharmaceutical collective can diagnose and treat up to seven common conditions; in Australia, a significant portion of palliative care falls on community pharmacies, reviewing medications at home and in residential care, even providing support to patients and caregivers in bereavement. In the United States, the role of pharmacists in hospitals goes beyond preparing doses for patients, doing all the pharmacotherapeutic monitoring of medications. And these are just some examples that occur in countries where pharmacies do not have, by far, the capillarity that Spanish pharmacies cover, which we can interpret as a lack of strategic vision on the part of the Administration of our country.
Looking closer, in Spain there are communities in which community pharmacists can make precautionary medication blocks in case there are problems with it, or dispense exceptionally when the need arises. They also perform HIV tests or collaborate in collecting test samples for the early detection of colon or cervical cancer. In other communities, a collaborative dispensing has been established between the hospital pharmacy and the community pharmacy, with the indispensable involvement of pharmaceutical distribution, so that patients with hospital medications have the option of collecting their drugs at their reference pharmacy, instead of having to go to the hospital periodically, thus maintaining pharmaceutical custody throughout the process and reducing the carbon footprint. In cases of shortages, when the solution is a foreign medication, there are communities that make the dispensing through community pharmacies, avoiding the need to go to offices of the corresponding health service.
All these improvements are based on three fundamental points: the recognition of the professional capabilities of the pharmacist, the need to provide effective solutions to an increasingly collapsed health system, and, above all, prioritizing the health of the citizens.
There are those who want to see in this process of change that already occurs in a large part of the most advanced countries and a significant number of Spanish autonomous communities and cities, a confrontation in the own competences of other groups such as doctors or nurses. Even those who point to economic reasons, without valuing what the substantial improvement of the health of the population would really mean in savings.
The Canary Islands, in this new stage, will have to decide what part of the train it wants to be, whether the locomotive that pulls the rest forward, whether a middle car that lets itself be carried, or whether it prefers to stay in one of the dead tracks of the station so that nothing changes.
We are talking about improvement in primary care, in prevention, in adherence to treatment, in waiting lists, in research and, obviously, in global health.
We, the pharmacists, are perfectly aware of our importance, and so are the citizens. That is why we are in permanent training and that is why we are the health professionals to whom, mostly, patients go to consult as the closest and most immediate option.
Like the good players in any team sport, we have trained well and are ready to jump onto the field as soon as the coach tells us. It only remains for the coach to decide with what strategy he wants to play and finally trust us.
