Pharmaceutical Care Services in Pharmacy Practice

Dear Colleagues,

Medicines are among the most common medical interventions for the treatment, prevention, and therapy of chronic diseases. Additionally, a continuous increase in the prevalence of chronic medical conditions is expected alongside the accompanying polypharmacy. This scenario renders chronic patients at an increased risk of experiencing drug therapy problems, hence adding substantial costs to the health care system and exceeding the amount spent on the medications themselves. Thus, to ensure patients’ optimal medication use and improve their clinical outcomes, comprehensive and systematic management of medications is deemed crucial. In the last few decades, pharmacists have played a crucial role in the medication management through provision of various pharmaceutical services. Pharmacy services provided by trained pharmacists can bridge this gap by increasing rational drug use, improving the prescribing of medicines, and reducing the unnecessary and often harmful use of medications and the resulting complications. In the era of aging populations, polypharmacy, multiple chronic conditions, complex and decreasingly manageable therapy regimens, pharmaceutical services (e.g., Comprehensive Medication Management (CMM) services) are especially important for chronic elderly patients taking five or more medicines, often potentially inappropriate ones, who are at an increased risk of experiencing medication errors, ADEs, duplications of therapy and detrimental interactions, and who often fail to reach therapy goals.

We invite you to share your research in relation to the role of pharmaceutical care practitioner providing medication management in various clinical environments (community pharmacy, hospital, primary care-based CMM services). Manuscripts in the form of articles, reviews, meta-analyses, commentaries, and opinion pieces will be considered and accepted for publication. We invite research papers that are both qualitative and quantitative in nature. We hope this Special Issue will inspire pharmacists and researchers to share their own practices and adopt new approaches and innovate to make improvements in health care provision.

Dr. Iva Mucalo
Dr. Andrea Brajkovic
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmacy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• pharmaceutical care
• medication management
• comprehensive medication management services
• pharmacy services
• primary care
• drug therapy problems
• potentially inappropriate medicines
• polypharmacy
• clinical outcomes