Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters
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Access Fort Garry, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, Winnipeg, MB R3T 6E8, Canada
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School of Pharmacy, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Pharmacy 2019, 7(2), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020042
Received: 15 April 2019
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Revised: 23 April 2019
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Accepted: 23 April 2019
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Published: 27 April 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Travel Medicine - Series Ⅰ)
Since 2007, community pharmacists in Canada have become increasingly involved in delivering Travel Health services, including the recommendation and administration of vaccines. This qualitative scoping survey examines some of the activities and opinions of those early pharmacist adopters delivering these services. A Survey Monkey free text questionnaire was emailed to pharmacists who were involved in delivering travel medicine services. 21 pharmacists responding represented seven Canadian provinces. Only 5 pharmacists estimated that they were seeing five or more patients a week on average. Amongst the challenges they faced the most quoted was lack of time when running a busy pharmacy (62%) a lack of prescribing authority, (52%), and lack of access to public health vaccines (52%). ‘Word of mouth’ was widely quoted as a means of developing the service, indicating a good patient satisfaction. Also expressed were the advantages of convenience in terms of being a ‘one stop shop’, ease of billing to insurance companies and convenient appointment times. There are a number of challenges which are still to be faced which may be resolved by further legislation allowing access to public health vaccines and more widespread prescribing rights. The relatively low level of consultations reported by some is of concern if those pharmacists are to maintain competence.
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Keywords:
travel medicine; community pharmacy; vaccination; Canada
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Thidrickson, D.; Goodyer, L. Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters. Pharmacy 2019, 7, 42. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020042
AMA Style
Thidrickson D, Goodyer L. Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters. Pharmacy. 2019; 7(2):42. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020042
Chicago/Turabian StyleThidrickson, Doug, and Larry Goodyer. 2019. "Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters" Pharmacy 7, no. 2: 42. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020042
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