Building Evidence in Pharmacy Practice Research

Zaheer-Ud-Din Babar1
1
Professor in Medicines and Healthcare, Department of Pharmacy, School of Applied Sciences,
University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom

Abstract
As COVID-19 is threatening to change the course of healthcare systems, economies and
countries,it has also emphasized the need for humanity to create credible scientific evidence to
act upon in publicpolicy space. Pharmacy practice research (PPR) is a specialty field within the
wider area of health servicesresearch and it focuses on studies of how and why people access
pharmacy services, the cost of careand services and what happens to the patients as a result of
this care. This study aimed to evaluate and quantify the effects of medication review by
pharmacists on substantive clinical outcomes (namely, hospital admissions, and mortality) and
on quality of life and patient satisfaction. The pandemic outbreak COVID-19 has put community
pharmacists at the frontline of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts.
Perspective paper in 2019 identified 43 pharmacists’ role in disaster throughout the stages of
response to a public health emergency. The role of pharmacists included medical supply,
vaccination, and educating the patients and consumers. Common features include disaster
response and mitigation efforts to ensure continuing medication supply and patient care. Home
delivery of medications and increased changes to repeat dispensing also impacted the role of
pharmacists around the world. Prices increases by the wholesalers and suppliers, frequent
inspection of authorities, extending working hours, financial loss in the pharmacy,
reimbursement delay to pharmacies, and mental health issues also challenge the pharmacists in
pandemic COVID-19. Human resource, understanding the methods of research, health systems,
and how this research would be used are needed to produce evidence informed research in
COVID-19.
Keywords: pharmacy, covid-19, evidence based medicine