Pharmacists as Professionals Engaged in Caring for Individuals’ Health
It is widely accepted that pharmacists have long been recognized as healthcare professionals. From the medieval apothecaries until today, pharmacists have contributed to the well-being of citizens mainly through the preparation and dispensation of drugs and health products to the public.
International organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), state that community pharmacists are the healthcare professionals most accessible to the public (World Health Organization, 1997). Being often the first port of call, they are trusted by patients to deal with health matters, pharmacists have developed patient care competencies (Wiedenmayer et al., 2006).
Within the European Union (EU), pharmacists’ qualifications are automatically recognized between member states (European Parliament, 2013). The Directive 2013/55/EU Article 45 (#2), amongst other expected competencies, specified the personalized support for patients by those administering their medication, which comprises also the dispensing accountability.
The International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) states that pharmacists have to communicate effectively (i.e. clearly, precisely and appropriately) with patients, healthcare staff, supporting staff, carers, family relatives and other clients; also, pharmacists should tailor communications to patients’ needs, including demonstrating cultural awareness and sensitivity (International Pharmaceutical Federation, 2012).
These requirements strongly advocate that pharmacists’ education should comprise training in the so-called Health and Medical Humanities. These are concerned with healthcare and its engagement with the humanities and arts, incorporating patients and the general public experience (Cole, Carlin, & Carson, 2015).
Health and Medical Humanities: An Overview
Over the last few decades, Health and Medical Humanities grew out of Bioethics and brought aesthetic tools to medicine and healthcare education, improving the ability to think and act otherwise about health and illness (Alan Bleakley, 2020).
The acquisition and development of features like empathy towards patients and a deeper understanding and accompaniment of their suffering, regarding each condition, has an important role in caregiving. The need to recognize as well the subjective experience of the healthcare professional, necessary for the promotion of professionals’ self-care, including the intersubjective recognition of the patients’ position, are essential skills to be developed since undergraduate education (Hojat et al., 2009).
The gradually fragmented ‘new medicine’ (Antunes, 2012), that came to dominate the medical field, has not promoted a better dialogue with the patient, with his/her experience often being ignored, nor has it given much room for an acknowledgment of professionals’ subjective experience of being faced with human suffering and the responsibility to alleviate it.
As Hurwitz and Dakin also suggested, there has been an increasing perception that science by itself is necessary but not enough to completely understand the interaction between health, illness, and disease and, therefore, provide quality and patient-centered care (Hurwitz & Dakin, 2009). Medical Humanities (MH) do not reject science but they promote the humanities in order to explore their implications and applications for healthcare.
As Claire Hooker points out, MH were driven by a conscious motivation to bring together the humanities and creative arts as a necessary supplement to technical medical education, which offered little preparation for the emotion and meaning that are intrinsic to encountering illness, tended to reduce patients to the numbers and body parts of biomedical diagnosis, and subject the sick to the uncaring managerial rationalities of health-care systems (Hooker, 2014 pp. 213-24).
They represent an area of study that considers the nontechnical aspects of medicine, with three main goals: to study the human aspects of medicine, to connect this with the creative arts and to train better healthcare professionals. In its core, the MH intersects medicine with disciplines from the humanities (Hooker, 2008).