Telepharmacy: A Pharmacist's Perspective on the Clinical Benefits and Challenges

Running head: TELEPHARMACY
Pharmacy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive summary
Telepharmacy is considered to be a method of distributing pharmaceutical care and products
to patients, by the means of technologies that focus on different facets of telecommunication.
The report found that the approach of telepharmacy helps patients to receive their clinical
consultations and medicines, besides other pharmaceutical care provisions. The patients are
usually provided the services at their place of residence, regardless of its distance from the
urban areas. The report also found that some of the services that are facilitated by
telepharmacy drug therapy monitoring, patient counseling, and refill authorization for
prescribed drugs, monitoring compliance by teleconferencing and/or videoconferencing, and
the authorization of prearranged drugs. The report found that enforcement of telepharmacy
services would prove beneficial in addressing the health disparities that exist in the rural and
remote population.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion of issue.....................................................................................................................4
Wakerman’s definition...............................................................................................................5
Issues identified..........................................................................................................................8
Recommendations and solutions................................................................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................12

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Article used:
Poudel, A., &Nissen, L. M. (2016). Telepharmacy: a pharmacist’s perspective on the clinical
benefits and challenges. Integrated pharmacy research & practice, 5, 75.
doi: 10.2147/IPRP.S101685
Introduction
Rural health is commonly known as rural medicine and refers to the multidisciplinary
study of health status of different people residing in remote environments. The concept of
rural health has often been associated with midwifery, telemedicine, telehealth, economics,
sociology, and geography. There is mounting evidence for the fact that the healthcare needs
of people living in rural regions are quite different from their urban counterparts (Russell et
al., 2013). Furthermore, lack of adequate access to healthcare facilities in remote locations is
a common problem that results in poor health outcome of the inhabitants (Todd, Copeland,
Husband, Kasim & Bambra, 2015). Some of the major differences can be attributed
demographic, geographic, workplace, socioeconomic, and personal health factors. Most rural
communities have been found to comprise of a great proportion of aging people and kids.
With comparatively limited people belonging to the working age of 20–50 years, these rural
communities manifest an increased dependency ratio (Nakakaawa, Moll, Vedeld, Sjaastad &
Cavanagh, 2015).
People living in remote areas are also subjected to subordinate socioeconomic
conditions, poor educational attainment, greater mortality rates, and increased rates of alcohol
and tobacco consumption, in comparison to their urban counterparts (Doogan et al., 2018).
Telepharmacy refers to the delivery of different kinds of pharmaceutical care services with
the use of telecommunications, to patients or clients who live in locations. It is generally
difficult to establish direct communication and/or contact with the pharmacists in such remote