Pharmaceutical care can be given in all settings: The community, hospitals, long-term care, and the clinic. However, published literature indicates that there is a substantial barrier to implementing pharmaceutical care programs in community pharmacies. This review was conducted to discover gaps and limitations in pharmaceutical care services in community pharmacies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). We searched PubMed and other available scientific website databases using the following key words to retrieve the relevant articles: Community Pharmacy, Healthcare System, Pharmaceutical Care, KSA. Two authors independently screened the titles and abstracts of promising articles. They discarded irrelevant studies and retained studies, and reviews that held the promise of relevant data or information. The review revealed that only one out of the four studies conducted in KSA retrieved by the authors reported pharmaceutical care service other than dispensing. The same results were reported in other studies conducted in some developing countries. All pharmaceutical care services were reported in studies conducted in Europe. The authors came to the conclusion that in KSA, dispensing of medicines is the dominant service provided by community pharmacists and that there was very limited if not a total absence of other pharmaceutical care services.
ملخص البحث : يمكن تطبيق برنامج الرعاية الصيدلانية في جميع المنشآت الصحية كصيدليات المجتمع، والمراكز الصحية. تشير البحوث المنشورة بوجود عوائق حقيقية تحول دون تنفيذ برامج الرعاية الصيدلانية في صيدليات المجتمع. وتبين هذه المقالة أن هناك قصورا في خدمات الرعاية الصيدلانية في صيدليات المجتمع بالمملكة العربية السعودية، وأن عمليات صرف الدواء هي الخدمة المهيمنة بالصيدليات مع هامش لا يكاد يذكر لخدمات الرعاية الصيدلانية.
Keywords: Community pharmacy; Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; drug therapy problems; healthcare system; pharmaceutical care.