Pharmaceutical Care: a Concept Analysis using Rodger's Evolutionary Method

The concept of pharmaceutical care has been used and discussed with multiple definitions in the literature related to health care sciences and especially in pharmacology and pharmacotherapy. However، the use of this concept is not common in the nursing literature and it has not currently been used. This study has been done to analysis the concept of pharmaceutical care in order to clarify areas of agreement of this concept in nursing and pharmacology disciplines and identifying its attributes، antecedents and consequences. Rodgers'' evolutionary method of concept analysis was used to clarify the meaning of Pharmaceutical care. Data bases of Sciencedirect، Springer and Google scholar were searched to retrieve the related literature. The main criteria for entry were، the literature published in English language in the disciplines of nursing and health care sciences. Literature search was limited to 1990-2011 with the keywords of «Pharmaceutical care» and «Pharmaceutical service» in the title of texts. The initial search resulted in 932 texts، 197 of them deemed relevant to our analysis. Then 40 texts (20 percent of those) were selected and reviewed. In this study، the attributes of pharmaceutical care were identified in two categories of specialized skills and communication skills. Specialized skills included five attributes including the identification of drug problems، resolving the drug problems، treatment and palliative care، monitoring short-term results of treatment and reviewing proportionality of prescription for each patient. The communication skills included four attributes of consultation with the patient، emotional commitment to the welfare of patients، collaboration with the health care team and attention to the patient''s medical condition. The antecedents included professional and organizational factors، and the consequences were health care، economic، informational and qualitative outcomes. The findings show that in spite of failure to use the concept of pharmaceutical care in nursing literature independently، it is a significant aspect of clinical practice and overall patient care.