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.

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