A companion to the FIP cancer care handbook for pharmacists 

This knowledge and skills reference guide provides a comprehensive list of required knowledge and skills in pharmaceutical and related care to support pharmacists to develop, upskill and refresh knowledge in CRDs and related roles in pharmacy. The guide supplements the FIP handbook on CRDs for pharmacists and was developed in consultation with a global reference group.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals prioritise universal health coverage (UHC) and commit to reducing the impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) as well as communicable diseases. This handbook is an important enabling tool to achieve those goals because it makes the case for the inclusion of care for chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) as part of UHC and demonstrates the important role pharmacists have in achieving this.

This new guidance for pharmacists explores how vaccination strategies for two important respiratory conditions — COVID-19 and influenza — can and should be considered together and combined in an effective and impactful way to improve uptake rates for each vaccine.

This guide, which is intended as a companion to the FIP diabetes handbook for pharmacists published in 2021, will help pharmacists to identify and acquire the competencies, such as screening and clinical management, they need to provide services for patients with diabetes.

Developed in collaboration with an international group of experts, this handbook aims to support pharmacy practice, presenting the many potential mental health care actions that pharmacists can perform, from preventing mental illness and screening for signs to optimising medication and responding to mental health crises.

Intended to accompany "Mental health — A handbook for pharmacists", this publication defines the knowledge and skills that pharmacists need to acquire to provide mental health services.  

Outcomes from a series of regional roundtables.

Report of an international advisory roundtable gathered by FIP to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the role of pharmacists in iron deficiency anaemia.

This report provides intelligence from 36 countries around the world on pharmacists’ current role in vaccination services. The new data show that their role has expanded since the publication of a previous FIP report in 2020. This increase has been driven in part by the need for urgent and mass vaccination as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Executive summary of FIP's "Community pharmacy global report 2021".

With this publication, FIP aims to support individual pharmacists with understanding how they can contribute to improving vaccination coverage through services ranging from patient education and advice, to logistical roles and the administration of vaccines. This handbook provides guidance on the practical implementation of these services and includes guidelines on the procedures, safety aspects, common risk points and frequently asked questions about vaccines and their administration. This handbook does not seek to replace the training and certification of the pharmacy workforce for delivering vaccination services, but it may support them in their daily practice and in gaining an overview of these roles and how they may be performed.

This toolkit outlines the principles and important processes that pharmacists should follow when providing a medicines reconciliation service.  It summarises the definitions, impact and procedures for the implementation of pharmacist-led medicines reconciliation in both community and hospital healthcare settings and offers a set of tools to support practice. The toolkit contributes to the World Health Organization’s third Global Patient Safety Challenge — “Medication without harm”.

A handbook to support pharmacists in preventing, controlling, managing and treating vector-borne diseases, produced in collaboration with the Pharmaceutical Forum of the Americas.
This publication provides an overview of vector-borne diseases and the actions that pharmacists can take. It covers:

• Education on prevention methods;
• Advice on the use of repellents;
• Compounding of mosquito repellents;
• Improving vaccination coverage;
• Optimising adherence to treatments; and
• Reducing social stigma.

This report contains the key messages from the FIP Regional Conference for the European Region on primary health care, held by FIP in collaboration the Turkish Pharmacists’ Association in 2019. It describes needs in the European Region in order for pharmacy to deliver breakthroughs for better primary health care and presents findings of a 2020 survey of FIP member organisations (n=16) to evaluate national pharmacy priorities and strategies towards the implementation of that commitment.

This report presents the findings of an international survey on the awareness and roles of community pharmacists related to air pollution and respiratory health, with responses from 62 countries and territories.

It defines a number of barriers that must be overcome if the profession is to be able to practise to its full potential in this area. Intelligence from this survey may inform policymaking, advocacy efforts and new service development by pharmacist organisations around the world.

Goals to support the transformation of the pharmacy profession around the world.

This reference document describes the positive impacts of pharmacists in supporting “Medication without harm”. It provides information about what pharmacists can do to promote patient safety at an individual patient level, as well as at organisational and policy development levels, and includes case studies of best practice from Australia, Canada, Finland, India, the Netherlands, Oman, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the USA. This publication highlights a need to shift towards a collaborative systems approach that promotes effective risk management and continuous quality assurance. 

This report contains the findings of FIP’s latest survey  (2020) of pharmacy’s impact on immunisation coverage. It evaluates different aspects of pharmacist-led immunisation, including advocacy and awareness activities, regulatory frameworks, vaccine administration, reimbursement models, training and certification, vaccination records, and limitations and barriers to the expansion of pharmacy practice to include vaccine administration. A total of 99 countries and territories participated, making this the most comprehensive report published on this subject to date. 

This resource offers practical guidance on implementing a vaccination service and sets out the roles and technical requirements for pharmacy-based vaccines-related services.

This report contains the findings of a survey of FIP member organisations in 22 countries about the use of mHealth applications by pharmacists and apps developed or endorsed by those organisations. Many mHealth applications have been endorsed by professional bodies around the world. The report highlights some of these endorsed applications and identifies gaps for future development.

The value of involving pharmacists in the prevention, early detection and management of non-communicable diseases is highlighted in this report. It contains reviewed published evidence of the impact of pharmacists in the fight against NCDs and recommends actions for national and local associations of pharmacists.

In this reference document, attention is paid to the fact that women as informal caregivers considerably lighten the load of the healthcare labour force, often playing a crucial and underappreciated role in providing healthcare to families and communities. The evidence reveals that health systems rely on women’s contributions as important caregivers, but they do not adequately support women in this endeavour. This document also provides an overview of gender-based policies and a brief overview of current initiatives in this area.

New medicines services, more counselling when a medicine is supplied again, dosage administration aids and reminder systems are among a list of pharmacy interventions with evidence of improving adherence to medication in elderly patients with chronic conditions. This report is intended as a tool to promote the role pharmacists can play in tackling adherence issues to governments and other agencies.

This report was released in a landscape of challenges such as substandard and falsified medicines, and a shortage of human resources in the health supply chain. The need to ensure effective and safe medicines supply prompted FIP to take a close look at the actual role of pharmacists in pharmaceutical supply chains. This report aims to provide a foundation from which improvement can develop. The report points out that investment in training and education are needed to strengthen pharmacists’ roles in supply chains, and it details the competencies that these roles require.

The value of involving pharmacists in reducing harm from drugs of abuse is highlighted in this report, which describes harm reduction services such as needle exchange and opioid substitution in different regions and countries, including Europe, the USA, Canada, central Asia and the Middle East. In addition, against a background of shifting policies on marijuana around the world, the report also addresses questions over the supply from pharmacies of marijuana or cannabinoid-containing products for the purpose of medicinal use or recreational use, or both.

A publicly accessible summary of the 2015-17 detailed survey that FIP conducts every two years on the state of the pharmacy profession at the global level, giving an overview of topics ranging from the distribution of pharmacists in different sectors and access to pharmacies, to models of generic medicines dispensing/substitution and the availability of medicines online. The full report is available to FIP member organisations only.

An overview of some of the systems used to report medicines shortages around the world (eight medicines shortages reporting systems from six countries - Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Slovakia, South Africa and the USA) comparing a range of features such as the scope of the shortages listed, the criteria applied (such as the predicted duration of a shortage) and the sources of information used. This report is intended to support the implementation of the World Health Assembly Resolution on “Addressing the global shortage of medicines and vaccines” adopted in 2016.

This reference paper reviews the current state of consumer interest in health care and presents a collection of evidence of pharmacy services related to self care and the value that pharmacists bring to health care systems in this way. It lays out the drivers of self care and profound changes in the way health care systems operate.

The first time that the implementation of medicines information, which is key to the safe and effective use of medicines, has been explored at a global level. Medicines information can be inaccurate, overwhelming, biased, unhelpful or simply not well understood. This publication sets out a vision for collaboration and action towards ensuring high quality medicines information around the world, through the use of strategies.

This briefing document presents an overview of the most frequent policy options in terms of regulation of the establishment of community pharmacies in their territorial distribution, as well as key advocacy arguments for or against each model and a number of examples of how different countries or territories approach this issue.

The findings of a survey of 45 countries conducted by the FIP Collaborating Centre at University College London, and commissioned by FIP, offers offers an international overview of pharmacists’ activities to support immunisation. The report includes in-depth case studies from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland, UK and USA, with advancement examples that can potentially be adopted by other countries to advocate for a national immunisation strategy that actively involves pharmacists as part of the public health agenda.

The first global guidelines that support continued access to medicines and pharmacy expertise during natural disasters, such as floods, heat waves and earthquakes. This document was produced by FIP’s Pharmacy Emergency Management Working Group following extensive consultation.

This briefing document gives a number of examples from around the world, showcasing pharmacists’ value in performing health promotion, triage and referral as well as other interventions. It aims to make visible the contributions of pharmacists and provide a platform for future initia-tives that national pharmacy associations may run to support pharma-cists and the creation of well-designed interventions in pharmacies.

This reference document describes the different ways in which pharmaceuticals find their way into our water supplies, soil and atmosphere, and presents current findings on their levels in the environment. It also describes some of the negative effects that pharmaceuticals in the environment can have on living organisms and the actions that pharmacists have been taking to reduce their impact.

This briefing document reports what pharmacists have already been doing to avoid the further emergence of antimicrobial resistance, offering a menu of solutions drawn from around the world. These range from giving advice on influenza immunisation (thereby avoiding subsequent bacterial superinfections) and responsible prescribing of trimethoprim by pharmacists to treat urinary tract infections, to stewardship programmes to optimise antibiotic prescribing in hospitals, and the collection of left-over antibiotics.

The briefing document gives an overview of the areas in mental health care in which pharmacists are involved, including health promotion, early detection, triage, optimising treatment outcomes, education (including addiction prevention), shaping public policies, research and interprofessional practice.

An FIP health advisory document to support the provision of pharmaceutical care to migrant populations. Additional tools include: - Software to convey medication instructions into Arabic - Leaflets to facilitate the dialogue between pharmacists and migrant patients: • German - Arabic • English - Arabic • French - Arabic • Spanish - Arabic - An example formulary for migrants into Europe (based on http://www.adler-apotheke-hh.de/fluechtlingsversorgung)

This handbook was produced by the World Health Professions Alliance in cooperation with the Indian Pharmaceutical Association. It contains tips on preventing and detecting counterfeit medicines as well as advice on how to minimise the threat and change behaviours.

Summary of key findings of the “Advanced practice and specialisation in pharmacy: Global report, 2015”. The intention of this document is to provide helpful guidance and navigation for FIP’s stakeholders and to inspire FIP member organisations to consider strategy development and actions at national level, and to enable them to prepare briefings and communiqués for their own networks and stakeholders.

The first ever international overview of the extent of the advanced and specialised roles that pharmacists are undertaking, and the mechanisms supporting these developments. This reports expands the global evidence base on the global status of advanced and/or specialised pharmacy practice scopes and the models in which they exist, informing the implementation of Pharmaceutical Workforce Development Goal 4: Advanced and Specialist Development. Forty-eight countries and territories were surveyed to obtain country-level information regarding policy and implementation of advanced practice and specialisation. In addition, a series of seventeen country case studies were presented to illustrate an in-depth view of policy and implementation trends. The report outlines trends in policy development related to advanced and specialised roles, such as the development of national definitions, criteria and professional recognition systems.

Reference paper authored by FIP's Working Group on Pharmacist Ethics and professional autonomy.

Pharmacies are often the first point of contact with the health system for patients and people with health-related concerns. Designed to keep the whole pharmacy workforce well informed during the outbreak of the Ebola virus disease in West Africa countries in 2014, this “Information and guidelines” document includes suggestions for pharmacy activities for providing the crucial public health service of preventing the spread of the disease, and a list of reliable sources of additional information.

In 2013, FIP organised the International Summit on Medicines Shortage in Toronto, Canada, providing a forum to discuss the causes, impact and solutions to medicines shortages through a multi-stakeholder approach. The summit made six major recommendations. This report contains a summary of the discussions and recommendations from the summit.

This booklet contains an analysis describing and explaining the global development of community and hospital pharmacy in the context of the demographic and allied developments of the past century. It seeks to evaluate the challenges and opportunities facing pharmacy as both a regulated business and a healthcare profession at the start of of the 21st century, and to consider public interests in its ongoing evolution.

This briefing document showcases the contributions of pharmacists in diabetes care. It gives a number of examples from around the world, presenting services for diabetes patients and pharmacists-led cam-paigns to celebrate World Diabetes Day. It aimed to provide a platform for future initiatives that national pharmacy associations may run to support pharmacists and the creation of well-designed interventions in pharmacies.

A joint WHO-FIP publication on developing pharmacy practice, which aims to guide pharmacy educators in pharmacy practice, to educate pharmacy students and to guide pharmacists in practice to update their skills. This handbook, which brings together practical tools and knowledge, was written in response to a need to define, develop and generate global understanding of pharmaceutical care at all levels.