Pharmacies for citizens ...

Introduction

Cittadinanzattiva continues to deal consistently with Pharmacies since in recent years the role of the pharmacist and pharmacies have proved essential in the areas of prevention, in the management of the health needs of people and communities, especially fragile ones such as for example, people with chronic diseases and people living in inland / rural areas.
All health professionals, in respect of their mutual competences and functions, responsibilities and autonomy of intervention, are called to operate effectively in teams and have as a common compass the attention to the active involvement of the citizen in the treatment plan and to its progressive responsibility in managing self-care practices.
On this level, various elements make the pharmacy as a natural reference point for the National Health Service, far from being a point of sale for drugs and health products: the widespread diffusion of pharmacies at a territorial level, the proximity and personalization potential that the pharmacist can implement in relation to the health needs of citizens, the lack of filters and bureaucratic hitches in the relationship with people, etc.

The activities promoted so far by Cittadinanzattiva
1995 and 2015 mark two of the main milestones of Cittadinanzattiva's commitment to the Pharmacies, on the basis of which multiple activities have been built over time, and on multiple fronts, which constitute an organic and integrated set of concrete approaches to this theme, become an axis of constant commitment in the policies of our organization.
The activities promoted and implemented at national level, divided by type, are described below:

1. Documents / placements produced by Cittadinanzattiva
   • Pharmacy Quality Charter (1995)
   • Pharmacy Quality Charter (September 2015) - Twenty years after the first draft, the Court for the rights of the patient of Cittadinanzattiva and Federfarma have renewed and updated the text. The inspiring principles of the Charter are: accessibility, reception and personalization, information, safety and quality standards of the services provided. For each of these categories, the Charter lists the rights to be guaranteed to the citizen and the commitments that the pharmacy undertakes to respect them.
2. Institutional dialogue, stakeholder engagement and participation in working groups
   • National Table on the Pharmacy of Services - Ministry of Health - Established by Decree of 30.11.18 of the Director General of Health Planning of the Ministry of Health to define the guidelines of the three-year experimentation on the "pharmacy of services" in 9 Regions (March - July 2019)
   • Collaboration protocol between Cittadinanzattiva and SIF (Italian Society of Pharmacology) (February 2019)
3. Initiatives in the context of the emergency from Covid-19
   • 31.03.20, Call of Federfarma and Cittadinanzattiva in a note addressed to the Ministry of Health and AIFA: to distribute, through pharmacies, the antiviral and antimalarial drugs authorized for the home treatment of patients with Covid-19, thanks to the delivery services free at home, through the toll-free numbers of Federfarma and the Italian Red Cross. News.
   • 23.04.20, With Federfarma and Teva Italia, a joint commitment for Italian pharmacists: Teva Italia wanted to respond to the appeals of Federfarma and Cittadinanzattiva regarding the need to equip Italian pharmacists in the area with suitable individual protection devices, donating 40,000 KN95 / FFP2 masks, whose distribution was managed by Federfarma according to the needs of the territory. News; Press release
4. Project activities
   • Protocol "Protected Pharmacy" 2020: in partnership with Apoteca Natura. Civic contribution in the definition of a document aimed at reengineering the activities and operating procedures of pharmacies aimed at guaranteeing the right to safety for pharmacists and collaborators in carrying out their work and guaranteeing protection for citizens and patients in accessing the pharmacy and in using services offered to the community, with particular regard to people who are more fragile and with chronic diseases.
   • Civic Audit of Pharmacies (three-year project 2018-2020)
     The aim of the project is to involve Apoteca Natura pharmacies in a structured civic evaluation process that allows to detect the quality of the services offered and the propensity to feel and be in charge of the National Health Service, from a Corporate Social Responsibility perspective. , from the "citizens' point of view". The general purpose of the project is to provide the Apoteca Natura Network of Pharmacies with an instrument - Civic Audit® - capable of bringing out good practices and critical elements in the services provided to citizens, useful for planning and implementing actions aimed at improve the service offered.
     • First pilot year: testing the application of the methodology to the 21 Municipal Pharmacies of Florence (AFAM) (2018)
     • Second year 2020-21 - dedicated website
     • Third phase: planning and implementation of improvement actions (2022)
   • Project with Sunifar
     http://www.quotidianosanita.it/lavoro-e-professioni/articolo.php?articolo_id=72433
   • Annual report on pharmacy, NHS monitoring (three-year project 2018-2020)
     It aims to help qualify the relationship between pharmacy / pharmacist and citizen, with a view to mutual trust, exchange and collaboration. The Report is constructed according to the method of civic analysis, through activities - carried out from a civic point of view - of collecting first and second degree information and of producing data, necessary to represent the orientation of the pharmacy to: be accessible , welcoming, attentive to the individual person, source of information, guaranteeing safety and quality standards of the services it provides, etc. The data are produced "according to the activation of policies and participation in public policies".
     • First year (2018) Download the Report
     • Second year (2019). Results presented on 28.11.19: News; Press release ; Download the abstract; Download the report
     • Third year (2020): "The role of pharmacies and their relationship with citizens in the Covid-19 emergency" underway.
   • Civic recommendation on therapeutic adherence not focused on the Pharmacy, but closely related to the topic (2018)
   • Civic monitoring of hospital pharmacies - Focus on the distribution of medicines (2018-2019) - Results presented by Cittadinanzattiva on 21.11.19 in the context of the XL National SIFO Congress.
5. Participation in industry events - Below are some of the participations
   • FarmacistaPiù - VI National Congress of Italian Pharmacists, Milan, 4-5 October 2019. Program. Antonio Gaudioso, Secretary General of Cittadinanzattiva, was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Congress. News: Cittadinanzattiva occurred in several sessions of the two days:
     • "Civic Audit of Pharmacies: a technology to Know, Innovate, Evolve", edited by Cittadinanzattiva, News.
     • Correct information to the citizen on health issues
     • Reform the future together Welfare and health policies: proposals to govern change
     • Advanced therapies and CAR-T

Find out more ... Regulatory references and useful materials
In Italy, to qualify the role of pharmacists and pharmacies in a new way - after Law 69/2009, Art. 11. “Delegation to the Government on new services provided by pharmacies within the National Health Service as well as provisions concerning municipalities with a population of up to 5,000 inhabitants "), the three ministerial decrees on the" pharmacy of services "(Ministerial Decree of 16 December 2010 in two Gazzette and Ministerial Decree of July 8, 2011), which governed the provision of new high socio-health value, (first-instance, second-level services that can be provided with instrumental devices, professional services performed by nurses and physiotherapists), in addition to highlighting the very peculiar activity of personalized support for citizen empowerment, prevention , to the recognition of "sentinel events" to be reported to the doctor for the necessary investigations, to self-medication.
The strategic role that pharmacies can assume makes it necessary that pharmacists are in turn available to work for their continuous training, for the qualification and strengthening of their skills, including clinical ones, inspired by models known internationally with the expression "Community pharmacy".
By clicking on this link you reach the portal of the Ministry of Health where Decrees and regulations relating to Pharmacy are available.

(document translated by Giulia Decarolis, ACN staff)
(last update: July 2020)