Inter-professional ethics and pharmaceutical issues

Abstract

Health care professionals are bound together by a common goal in order to promote the good of patients and society. Patients expect this co-operation in order to receive optimal treatment and care with respect to pharmaceutical therapies that are required to meet their needs. However, a number of issues are curtailing the attainment of this goal and these will be addressed in this paper. The development of expensive innovative medicines; financing of medicinal therapy under the Social Security Act (priority setting and rationing treatment), patient-centred care and continuity of patient care at state pharmacies, from which all free medicines under the Social Security Act are currently dispensed is steadily improving. An ever-rising demand for specific treatments by individual patients; and a trend to treat medicines as ordinary items of commerce form the backdrop to these issues.