ETHICS AND BUSINESS IN COMMUNITY PHARMACIES – A FRAMEWORK FOR AN ETHICAL DIALOGUE

Abstract

The community pharmacy is a health institution and a business at the same time. Pharmacists in community pharmacies often find themselves in situations that represent a conflict between professional ethics and business interests. The most frequent conflicts are related to the setting of sales targets by employers, dispensing complementary medicines, making time for patient counseling, and collecting expired medicines from patients. We believe that solving such conflicts between ethics and business requires the intervention of the pharmacists’ professional associations, which should initiate a dialogue with pharmacists’ employers. The objective of this paper was to propose a framework for an ethical dialogue to help these associations find solutions agreed upon by all stakeholders. Within the proposed framework, we analysed every conflict situation occurring between ethics and business using a model for ethical problem-solving and suggested common action plans for resolving these conflicts. We found that ethics and business may have common goals in community pharmacies, such as the satisfaction of patients and employed pharmacists or the sustainable development of companies. The goals may be reached by training, implication, and cooperation within the ethical dialogue framework, both at the organizational and individual levels. Our findings are useful and important for supporting initiatives of conflict resolution through collaboration between pharmacists’ professional associations and employers, to identify and implement common actions in community pharmacies.