Objective: We conducted a survey to understand the current state of pharmacy services and pharmacists' thoughts in the future of the community pharmacy setting. Methods: A questionnaire was distributed to 229 pharmacists and gathered from 95 respondents. Results: We asked to pharmacists about what the ideal pharmacy duty should be in the next 10 years at the community pharmacy setting in Korea. For this question, the respondents said drug counselling (19.4%), dispensing (13.8%), longterm care of chronic disease and healthcare education (12.8%), and OTC counselling (11.5%). When asked about how much time they were spending doing certain tasks in the pharmacy, the main tasks were dispensing (23.5%), counselling (17.1%), prescription review (10.1%), and OTC counselling (5.5%). When asked about what the most important duty of a pharmacist was, medication counselling (45.4%) was the most important task that they identified and the reasons for not being able to fulfill this role properly was time shortage (78.9%) followed by the lack of counselling spaces, up-to-date knowledges, and focus on financial gains over patient counselling. Conclusion: Korean pharmacists are mainly focusing on dispensing in their daily work. Their basic responsibilities can be easily mechanized over the next few years, but the social expectations of disease-prevention and public health promotion both in current and future can not be replaced by such mechanical measures. Therefore, pharmaceutical services in Korea should be developed in more diverse and professional ways.
A double maintenance dose of clopidogrel at 150 mg daily was associated with a reduction in adenosine diphosphate-induced platelet aggregation in South Korean patients who previously exhibited clopidogrel resistance.
E-cigarettes were considered safe at the early stage of market entry because they were thought not to contain harmful ingredients such as nicotine and because the smoke emitted was vapor. For this reason, the use of e-cigarettes as a safer alternative to tobacco cigarettes or as a smoking cessation aid has emerged. However, the study results on the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation are mixed. In response to the increased use of e-cigarettes, foreign countries have implemented various regulations, such as utilizing e-cigarettes for smoking cessation with a prescription in Australia; however, South Korea is still standing firm on recommending not to use e-cigarettes at all. Therefore, the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation and the regulatory trends of e-cigarette use overseas will be reviewed to discuss the future direction in South Korea needs to take.
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