Social pharmacy may be defined as a discipline dealing with the role of medicines from social, scientific, and humanistic perspectives. It draws on theories of social and behavioral sciences including health psychology. Research of our unit consists of analyses of social factors influencing the use of drugs such as medicine-related beliefs, regulations, medication policy, attitudes, medicine information, ethics, or behavior.
Social pharmacy as a social science within the health care and pharmacy may provide various views on issues managed by health professionals inside as well as outside of the health care system. This multidisciplinary perspective often offers divergent opinions which could be sometimes considered as contradictory with conflicting solutions.
Social pharmacy is an interdisciplinary discipline which enables pharmacy professionals to participate in and take responsibility for decisions regarding drug-related issues at the societal level. Drugs significantly affect society, and the application of appropriate medication policies affects the quality of life in that culture. Citizens themselves can significantly alter the role of specific drugs in terms of prevention as well as causal, and symptomatic treatment. Thus, our intention is to identify and explore these relationships among regulators, health care professionals, and individuals with the aim to ensure benefit of patients as well as society at all.
The role of pharmacists in modern health care is essential. Their responsibility is increasingly connected to social pharmacy issues. In addition, recent developments in pharmacy practice reflecting the change from pharmaceutical and medicinal products oriented to patient oriented approach has been resulted in an increased interest in social pharmacy. With this change, pharmacists take responsibility for patient medication outcomes and have become even more active members in the health care team.
Results of our research projects contribute to facilitating of wider understanding of social pharmacy issues and suggest or modify nationwide changes and decisions, and also help to create the individual goals of regional as well as private institutions. Information about patient attitudes, beliefs, and habits are of essential importance to the health care providers (doctors and pharmacists) who are in daily contact with the end user (patient). Thus, medical and pharmaceutical professionals may focus their efforts on the goal of increased efficiency and greater satisfaction of the health care process. National changes over the last two decades including among others reforms in the Czech medical care can be re-evaluated and further developed by the wide range of research projects that are carried out by our research unit.