Pharmaceutical Professional Performance in Primary Health Care

Abstract

The pharmacist's role in pharmaceutical care occurs especially in two axes: medication management and pharmaceutical care. Direct patient care is a challenge for the Brazilian health system, as this context provokes the construction of a new professional identity of the pharmacist: the clinic. Objective: To analyze a current panorama of the role of pharmaceutical professionals in primary health care. Methodology: This was a descriptive and exploratory literature review study with a qualitative approach. The descriptors "primary care", "pharmacist" and "pharmaceutical care" were used, searched in an integrated way in the Scielo and Medline database. Results: The pharmacist still has a relevant role in management, but increasingly the system encourages the pharmacist to a more inclusive approach to patient care. There is consensus among the authors that the low number of pharmacists in primary care, coupled with the lack of perception of these professionals as part of the team and the lack of clarity about their attributions, contribute to the lack of recognition of this professional in the field of clinical practice. Conclusion: The incorporation of pharmaceutical clinical services has been shown to be an important strategy for resignification of the pharmacist in primary care. Actions involving clinical services need to be developed more frequently, so that the patient care bias is as explicit as the bureaucratic bias of pharmaceutical care.