Collaboration between pharmacist and family doctor in the Netherlands

Abstract

Collaboration between health professionals contributes to improving and maintaining a high level of quality of health services. In the first line, the family doctor and the pharmacist have in common the autonomy of organizing their own activity and the fact that they have developed models of collaboration and integration of activities to work together for the benefit of patients. Collaboration between family doctors and pharmacists can be done in working groups, projects, in an organized, struc-tured or informal setting whenever needed. Topics covered include prescribing and issuing medical recipes, avoiding and limiting incidents, side effects and polypharmacy or training the patients, limiting costs and evaluating new drugs. In the Netherlands there is a long tradition and different ways of collaboration between the family doctor and the pharmacist in order to meet the growing and especially changing medical needs of patients.