Search

The aim of this paper is to review the roles that community pharmacists in the United States (US) can play to support public health measures during the current severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic (COVID-19). Community pharmacists in the US are highly visible and accessible to the public and have long been regarded as a source for immunization services as well as other public health activities. In the US, the scope of pharmacy practice continues to expand and incorporate various health services on a state-by-state level. For the purposes of this article, a PubMed literature search was undertaken to identify published articles on SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, pharmacist- and pharmacy-based immunization and other public health care activities in the US in order to identify and discuss roles that community pharmacists can play during this pandemic including as vaccinators, screeners and testers. In conclusion, community pharmacists are knowledgeable and capable providers of public health services and are easily accessible and well regarded by the public. The incorporation of community pharmacists into this nation's COVID-19 pandemic response plan can help aid recovery efforts in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the scope of practice of pharmacists is determined primarily at the state level. Not all state laws expressly permit or prohibit pharmacists from providing certain services; in between is a grey area of legal silence. Does legal silence permit pharmacists to perform a service that is not specifically permitted, but not expressly prohibited? Point-of-care testing provides a useful case study in legal silence: there are 1536 pharmacies currently holding a CLIA-waiver to administer tests in states reporting that pharmacists are not expressly permitted to administer tests. Legal silence may even provide a better framework for pharmacy based testing as it is naturally inclusive of any point-of-care test and no laws need updated when a new test comes to the market. Other health professions navigate this legal silence by governing according to a "standard of care." Rather than specifying a list of services a health professional can or cannot provide in law, it provides a flexible framework for the health professional to provide any service that other similarly situated health professionals would provide in the same or similar situation. A standard of care regulatory framework should thus be the target of the pharmacy profession in order to advance patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]