IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v46y1998i1p83-95.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dispensing doctors and prescribing pharmacists: A South African perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Gilbert, Leah

Abstract

Adopting an historical and international perspective, this article explores and analyses the relationship and controversy between pharmacists and dispensing doctors in South Africa. In order to gain a better insight into this troublesome relationship, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods has been employed. The findings reveal a deep ongoing sense of competition, which is manifest in the form of public debate and continuous attempts to protect professional task domains. Most of the pharmacists interviewed in this study mentioned the "dispensing doctor" as the main problem facing the community pharmacist in South Africa. Meanwhile, the medical profession, as a united front, is fiercely protecting its "inherent" right to dispense medicines. Using the South African scenario, issues such as occupational task boundaries, "business" versus "professional" systems as well as the role of the state are discussed in relation to professional dominance, jurisdiction and autonomy.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilbert, Leah, 1998. "Dispensing doctors and prescribing pharmacists: A South African perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 83-95, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:46:y:1998:i:1:p:83-95
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(97)00147-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lim, David & Emery, Jon & Lewis, Janice & Sunderland, V Bruce, 2009. "A systematic review of the literature comparing the practices of dispensing and non-dispensing doctors," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-9, September.
    2. Rachamin, Yael & Meier, Rahel & Valeri, Fabio & Rosemann, Thomas & Muheim, Leander, 2021. "Physician-dispensing as a determinant of clinical and process measurements in patients at increased cardiovascular risk: A cross-sectional study in Swiss general practice," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(10), pages 1305-1310.
    3. Williams, Kevin Frank, 2007. "Re-examining 'professionalism' in pharmacy: A South African perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(6), pages 1285-1296, March.
    4. Filippini, M. & Heimsch, F. & Masiero, G., 2014. "Antibiotic consumption and the role of dispensing physicians," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 242-251.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:46:y:1998:i:1:p:83-95. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.