Barriers to pharmacists adopting professional responsibilities that support the appropriate and safe use of dietary supplements in the United States: Perspectives of key stakeholders

Integrating traditional Chinese medicines into professional community pharmacy practice in China – Key stakeholder perspectives

“…The results are consistent with the views of stakeholders in the US and Australia that suggest pharmacists be involved in T&CM pharmaceutical care, and that such a role remains poorly defined. [28,32] This study reinforced the findings of earlier work in the US and Australia that also suggested pharmacists should at least assume a role in assuring the safe use of HMs [28,32]. Our findings suggest that barriers exist within a range of pharmacy sectors including government, professional associations, education, pharmacy business, pharmacist and research.…”

“…Once PPS are established, the pharmacist's extended role may be formalized, and they will be bound to seeking continuous learning opportunities and improving practice according to the informed standards. Although it was not discussed explicitly, the collective actions suggested by the key stakeholders confirmed the need for a joint effort to support pharmacists' practice in ensuring the safe use of HMs [28,67], and the process should be guided by a systematic methodology to yield high-quality evidenced instructive documents [32,68].…”

“…In order to optimize the depth and breadth of the findings, the key stakeholder categories and the participants were selected within the cultural context and modelled on earlier studies [26,28,30]. A purposive sampling strategy was employed to recruit participants from the expert pool of the National Research Center for Licensed Pharmacist Development which was jointly established by the China Pharmaceutical University, the China Pharmaceutical Materials Association and the Licensed Pharmacist Qualification Center of the State Food and Drug Administration.…”

“…The interview guide was developed by conducting a careful review of the literature related to the integration of traditional and complementary medicines into pharmacy practice in the US and Australia [28,30,32,33], and pharmacy practice in China [34][35][36] (see Appendix). The interview questions focused on key areas including: (1) integrative medicine; (2) community pharmacists' responsibilities with regards to HMs; (3) factors that prevented community pharmacists from taking up such role; and (4) what it would take to improve their practice.…”

“…Research in the US, Australia, Canada and Thailand, have been initiated to explore, define and review pharmacists' duty of care (if any) with respect to T&CM products. [24][25][26][27][28]. Despite the high level of integration of TCM that includes HMs, and modern medicine in China, few studies have explored this area in depth.…”