Browsing by Subject "henkilöstön osaamisen kehittäminen"

Finland is one of the first countries in the world to introduce automatic substitution of biological medicines in community pharmacies. The automatic substitution for biological medicines will be introduced in stages in years 2024–2026. The successful and safe transition requires guidelines for implementing new operating practices and dispensing practices, including possible continuing education to community pharmacists to ensure their sufficient competence e.g. in advising patient how to use their administration devices. Therefore, the change process requires competence development and management. The purpose of competence management is to create, maintain and develop an organization. Competence management is part of strategic personnel management, which ensures that the organization has the core competence and other necessary competence to implement its mission. The aim of this master's thesis was to study the competence management while preparing for the automatic substitution of biologics in community pharmacies in Finland. The research focused on the competence management practices and competence development needs within the framework of 1) personnel management and competence development and 2) automatic substitution of biologics. The research was carried out as a qualitative focus group discussions (FGDs) (n = 6, altogether of 23 participants) in January 2023. Voluntary participant participated in the group discussions from community pharmacies of different sizes and from different parts of Finland. Of the participants there were pharmacy owners with M.Sc. (Pharm) degree (n = 5/23, 22 %), pharmacists with M.Sc. (Pharm) degree (n = 10/23, 43 %) and pharmacists with B.Sc. (Pharm) degree (n = 8/23, 35 %). Qualitative content analysis was carried out inductively, i.e. data oriented. In addition to the themes emerging from the research material, the main themes of the discussion body partially guided the analysis. SRQR checklist was used to support detailed reporting to evaluate the reliability of the study. The data analysis identified 1) factors related to the current practices and needs of competence management and needs for competence development, 2) methods applicable for competence development of pharmaceutical personnel, and 3) functions related to the delivery of the biological medicine, such as medication counselling, support for the patient's self-care and a possible substitution of biologics, as well as the functions and tools that support these. The results of this study indicated that competence management practices vary between community pharmacies, and the competence management actions were not always systematically planned. Community pharmacies did not yet have operating models or practices for implementing automatic substitution of biologics, although they perceived that automatic substitution practices for inhalable medicinal products could perform as a model for the substitution of biologics. Despite some perceived uncertainties concerning implementation of automatic substitution of biologics, community pharmacists and pharmacy owners had mainly positive attitude towards the coming changes.