Globally , the role of Pharmacists , is becoming vital for strengthening the primary health care (PHC) The focus on PHC has been further refreshed recently after the Astana declaration. It has emphasised the importance of competent workforce for improving Primary Health Care system's performance. Pharmacists are one of the key members of the Primary Health Care workforce. It is wel established that the adequately trained community pharmacist generates savings in economic terms. Hence the role of Pharmacist Competence in overall primary health Care performance is vital. Towards that, Competency assessment using standard framework for pharmacist in primary health Care would be the first step. The Challenge for that is the unavailability of competency assessment suitable for the LMICs. It is because the most of the existing frameworks are from High Income Countries (HICs), which may not be suitable for Low and middle-income countries.
The objective of this study, was "to develop a competency assessment framework for Pharmacist working in Primary Care Setting". While, the Specific objective was to identify relevant competencies for the Global Competency Framework domains of Pharmaceutical Public Health, Pharmaceutical Care, Organisation and Management, and Professional/Personal.
A systematic review of scientific and grey literature was done from 2000 to 2020. PubMed and SSRNdatabases were searched to accessthe scientific and grey literature, respectively. From these sources, thirty-six articles were found, of which five were duplicates. The rest thirty-one articles were studied in detail, and later sixteen articles were removed which did not fit into the pre-set criteria Finally, fifteen articles were selected which had illustrated at least one domain of Pharmacist Competencies.
Under 20 competencies, this review identified 175 behaviors in four domains; Pharmaceutical Health; Organisation and Management Competencies; Professional/Personal Competencies. It is intended to support policymakers and implementers in designing, monitoring, and evaluating Pharmacist competencies to improve pharmacist performance in the primary care setting through the proposed framework. It would also be helpful for researchers in exploring the competencies and behaviors further.
