This self-assessment tool will help to identify strengths and areas for improvement in order to inform vaccination policy and planning efforts. It is an aid to help national ministries of health, regulators and national pharmacy organisations in assessing overall vaccination programmes and the state of legislation and regulations within their countries to facilitate vaccination and enhanced patient care through the pharmacy workforce and community pharmacies. The tool will help with vaccination planning and the utilisation of the pharmacy workforce in primary healthcare and community-based vaccination programmes.
While this tool is not exhaustive in content and has yet to be validated, it is based on the experiences of professional regulators in countries where pharmacy-led vaccination has been successfully introduced and regulated. The checklist is based on the objective to deploy the pharmacy workforce and utilise pharmacies to increase access to vaccination services.
This tool is primarily addressed to regulators and policy-makers to support them in developing strategies or enabling regulatory frameworks in countries where pharmacists and the pharmacy workforce have a limited role in vaccination strategies. It may also be useful as a review tool in countries where the pharmacy workforce already provides vaccine-related care but wishes to further expand or consolidate such roles.
This tool addresses the enabling legislation that is needed and makes reference to additional clarification of the limitations and parameters in the current regulations for future learning. Typically, new or changing legislation can be slow and difficult to draft and enact, but regulations can be made through a simpler and more agile process. Implementation might further require clarifying policies or standards which become the real “how to” guide for healthcare professionals from a public protection perspective.
FIP, its Professional Regulators Advisory Group and its member organisations are a resource for the drafting and development of supportive regulations, policies, standards of care and training programmes. Clearly, the desired goal is to create legislative change to establish enhanced patient care and patient access to vaccinations through pharmacy practice.
