An international series on the integration of community pharmacy in primary health care

The interrelationship between governmental policies and objectives in primary health care and community pharmacy/pharmacists' strategic plans are of the outmost importance, having significant professional, economic and practical consequences for the future of the pharmacy profession, research, education and health care. Sharing information of the potential and real impact on current and future practice of community pharmacy/pharmacists, be it in product or service, in primary care would benefit many stakeholders. In order to create and focus professional and scientific debate the journal has commissioned key experts to contribute a series of country case studies. The aim of the series is to promulgate and disseminate country-based information on primary health care and community pharmacy/pharmacist

Badajoz community pharmacist preferences for continuing education

La formación continua es un deber ético y una obligación legal de los farmacéuticos comunitarios para mantener sus competencias actualizadas. Objetivos: Identificar las preferencias de los farmacéuticos de la provincia de Badajoz en cuanto a las actividades de formación continuada, tomando como marco referencial una encuesta nacional de 1992. Métodos: Estudio transversal realizado entre julio y noviembre de 2014, mediante una encuesta a una muestra aleatoriamente seleccionada (por generación de números aleatorios) de farmacéuticos propietarios (n=200) y farmacéuticos adjuntos (n=88) en ejercicio en la provincia de Badajoz. Se utilizó como marco referencial la encuesta de Martínez Romero y colaboradores de 1992. Resultados: Se obtuvo una tasa de respuesta del 99,3%. La mayoría de los encuestados (50,4%) no considera tener la suficiente formación y el 95,9% asistiría a una formación si fuese de su agrado. Un 58,3% se posicionó a favor de la obligatoriedad de la formación para el ejercicio profesional. El viernes fue el día con más adeptos, pero no hubo un patrón de horario preferido. Los Colegios Oficiales continúan siendo la entidad que se considera como idónea para organizar la formación (31,7%), mientras que la credibilidad de la Universidad para este cometido ha descendido drásticamente (del 33% al 3%). Conclusiones: Los farmacéuticos comunitarios continúan considerando necesaria la formación continuada y mayoritariamente aprueban su obligatoriedad. No hay patrones de preferencias en cuanto a horarios y días para las actividades, y no hay grandes diferencias entre las preferencias de farmacéuticos propietarios y adjuntos.Continuing education is an ethical duty and a legal requirement of community pharmacists to keep their competencies updated. Objective: To identify the preferences of community pharmacists from Badajoz province regarding the continuing education activities, using a 1992 National survey as a referential framework. Methods: Cross-sectional study performed between July and November 2014, by means of a survey to a randomized (list of numbers randomly generated) selected sample of owner pharmacists (n=200) and staff pharmacists (n=88) practicing in Badajoz province. As a referential framework, the 1992 Martinez Romero et al. survey was used. Results: A 99.3% response rate was obtained. The majority of respondents (50,4%) consider not having sufficient education and 95.9% would attend an educational activity if it seem interesting. 58.3% positioned in favor of a mandatory continuing training to practice. Friday appeared as the preferred day, but no common patterns appeared for a preferred timing. Official Pharmacists Associations keep being the ideal entity to organize the continuing education (31.7%), while University reliability for this task has drastically decreased (from 33% to 3%). Conclusion: Community pharmacists persist considering continuing education as necessary and mostly support their obligatoriness. No common patters regarding preferred timing and day of the week to set the activities. No big differences exist among owners and staff pharmacists

Publication delay in pharmacy practice journals: a comparative analysis

Introduction: Articles published in scientific journals are a valuable source of information and the main system to communicate research results. Authors frequently complain about the long duration of the editorial process, which includes time of external peer-review, layout formatting, and metadata indexing. Differences in the duration of these processes between areas have not been sufficiently explored. Aim: To evaluate the duration of the publication process in pharmacy practice journals compared with other scientific disciplines. Methods: From 67 pharmacy practice journals previously identified, 33 indexed in PubMed were selected for data collection. Metadata of all articles published between 2009-2018 were extracted from PubMed. To create a comparison group of randomly selected articles, the first PMIDs of each year between 2009-2018 were identified. Four lag times for the different steps of the publication and indexing process were calculated: Total publication lag (days between ‘submission date’ and ‘online publication date’), acceptance lag (days between ‘submission date’ and ‘acceptance date’), lead lag (days between ‘acceptance date’ and ‘online publication date’), and indexing lag (days between ‘online publication date’ and ‘Entry date’). Impact Factor (IF) and CiteScore data were also collected. Statistical analyzes were performed in SPSS v20 and RStudio v1.2. Results: The 33 pharmacy practice journals published a total of 26,256 articles. CiteScore of 25 journals was calculated with mean of 1.34 (SD 0.90); only 8 journals have IF (mean 2.135; SD 0.681). In the comparison group, 5,622 different journals published 23,888 articles with a median of 2 articles per journal (IQR 1-5). CiteScore was calculated for 4,879 of these journals, with mean of 2.61 (SD 2.64); 3,853 journals have IF (mean 3.337; SD 0.811). Comparison journals presented higher report rates for all the editorial process dates than pharmacy practice journals: submission OR=0.9 (IC95% 0.76-0.82), acceptance OR=0.86 (0.83-089), and Online publication OR=0.001 (0.0006-0.002). Acceptance lag was not different between pharmacy practice and comparison group (93 vs. 97 days), while small differences existed in lead lag (15 vs. 25 days; Cohen`s d=0.279). However, a greater difference was found in indexing lag (12 vs. 4 days; Cohen`s d=0.703). The analyses of pharmacy practice journals showed important variability in acceptance lag (range 13 to 290 days). Open access pharmacy practice journals presented a lower acceptance lag than subscription ones (74 vs. 126 days). Acceptance lag showed no association with CiteScore in both group of journals (p>0.05). The IF presented a significant inverse association, but with no effect size, with the acceptance lag, in both groups (p<0.001). Discussion: Although the average acceptance lag of pharmacy practice journals was similar to a generic comparison group, huge variability exists between these journals. While authors may consider the smaller acceptance lag as a good characteristic, literature suggests risks associated to fraudulent peer-review. Conclusions: About 95 days since submission are required to have an article accepted, whether in pharmacy practice or in comparison groups of biomedical journals.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How many manuscripts should I peer review per year?

Peer review provides the foundation for the scholarly publishing system. The conventional peer review system consists of using authors of articles as reviewers for other colleagues' manuscripts in a collaborative-basis system. However, authors complain about a theoretical overwhelming number of invitations to peer review. It seems that authors feel that they are invited to review many more manuscripts than they should when taking into account their participation in the scholarly publishing system. The high number of scientific journals and the existence of predatory journals were reported as potential causes of this excessive number of reviews required. In this editorial, we demonstrate that the number of reviewers required to publish a given number of articles depends exclusively on the journals' rejection rate and the number of reviewers intended per manuscript. Several initiatives to overcome the peer review crises are suggested

Produção científica em língua portuguesa: padrão de citação e avaliação dos indicadores de citação actuais de revistas biomédicas de língua portuguesa

Apesar da língua portuguesa ser utilizada por mais de 240 milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo, a sua presença no domínio das ciências biomédicas é mais fraca do que o expectável [1, 2]. A comunicação da ciência faz-se através da publicação em revistas científicas principalmente das que são indexadas em fontes secundárias (bases de dados científicas), pois esta será a forma destes periódicos ganharem visibilidade. As fontes secundárias têm um processo de selecção de revistas muito rigoroso e existem diversos viéses resultantes desse processo, nomeadamente geográficos e idiomáticos. De acordo com os critérios de seleção de revistas para indexação em bases de dados internacionais, um dos requisitos para a indexação de uma revista é o seu elevado número de citações. Estudos anteriores permitem perceber que revistas em português não têm grande visibilidade (não são indexadas), porque raramente são citadas, mas revistas em português raramente são citadas, porque não são visíveis (não são indexadas) [3-8]. Com este trabalho pretende-se compreender qual o padrão de citação atual de revistas biomédicas de língua portuguesa, tendo-se identificado alguns periódicos biomédicos, de origem brasileira e portuguesa, nas áreas da cirurgia, medicina clínica, enfermagem, ginecologia e obstetrícia e saúde pública. Assim apresentam-se já alguns resultados preliminares do estudo efetuado

Codificación sistemática de contenidos educativos de farmacia práctica

Introducción: Los organismos internacionales farmacéuticos reclaman una educación farmacéutica más centrada en el paciente, que de apoyo a las funciones de la atención farmacéutica. Para ello, se han desarrollado marcos de competencias, que no siempre se han asociado a los correspondientes contenidos docentes. Objetivo: Identificación sistemática de los contenidos programáticos del área de farmacia práctica, mediante la creación de un árbol de codificación de contenidos. Método: Análisis cualitativo de los contenidos docentes de asignaturas del área de farmacia práctica de los planes de estudios de las facultades de farmacia de Australia, Canadá, Estados Unidos, y Nueva Zelanda. Los syllabus fueron obtenidos de las páginas web de las facultades de farmacia, excluyendo las que no tenían el plan de estudios completo disponible en inglés. Se solicitó a los responsables de las asignaturas información adicional por correo electrónico. Se creó un árbol de contenidos inicial a partir de directrices del Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education. Se realizó un proceso iterativo de codificación dirigida, para obtener el árbol final de códigos que permitiese clasificar los contenidos docentes del área de farmacia práctica. Resultados: Se incluyeron 110 facultades (Australia=15; Canadá=5; Estados Unidos=89; y Nueva Zelanda=1), con 8733 asignaturas, de las que 1703  (19.5%) pertenecían al área de farmacia práctica y presentaban syllabus con información detallada. Se obtuvo respuesta con información adicional de 119 asignaturas. El análisis de contenido convirtió el árbol inicial de 39 categorías, en un árbol final de codificación con 3 niveles jerárquicos y 69 categorías. Conclusión: En los países del análisis, aproximadamente el 20% de las asignaturas pertenecen al área de farmacia práctica. Se ha conseguido un árbol de codificación y clasificación de los contenidos docentes de farmacia práctica. Futuros estudios deberían mapear las asignaturas actuales para determinar si los contenidos identificados están siendo enseñados