Challenges of sharing best practice internationally

摘要

The evolution of pharmacy practice in recent decades has been a global phenomenon, with the most striking changes occurring in the developed world1. In several countries, the emergence of expanded scopes of practice and new professional services models has proceeded rapidly, especially in the past decade, with minimum progress towards practice change observed in other countries2. Even within countries, expansion of scopes of practice has varied between regions. For example, in the UK, pharmacists have the opportunity to become independent prescribers within their scope of practice while, in Canada, only a few provinces have introduced independent prescribing34. In the United States, many but not all states allow for pharmacist participation in the prescribing process under the auspices of collaborative practice, whereby agreements or protocols are established between physicians and pharmacists depending on state regulations or laws, with limited examples of independent prescribing.