Since the concept of Pharmaceutical Care was announced from United States, this move has become an influential procedure of practice for many pharmacists around the world. 1 Pharmaceutical care is a professional practice that has arisen to meet the social need to prevent, identify, and solve drug therapy problems (DTP) and, therefore, reduce drug-related morbimortality. 2,3 DTP is any unwanted incident related to medication therapy that actually or potentially affects the desired goals of treatment. 4 DTP is an important public health problem and has been heightened in recent years. 5 Relatively 28% of all emergency department visits and 5 to 10% of all hospital admissions are drug related. 6,7 The estimated annual cost of drug-related morbidity and mortality resulting from nonoptimized medication therapy for the United States of America was $528.4 billion, equivalent to 16% of total US health care expenditures in 2016. 8 Thus, DTPs represent a great challenge in the healthcare system as a result of increased patient morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. 9 In this stage, pharmaceutical care emerges as a patient-centered practice, in which the pharmacist assumes responsibility for the patients’ pharmacotherapeutic needs and collaborates with other members of the health-care team, becoming then co-responsible for the outcomes of his/her pharmacotherapy. 10 According to, pharmacy education around the world is witnessing a process of transformation leading to perform pharmacists capable to provide pharmaceutical care. 11,12,13 Profound curricular changes have been occurred in countries like Australia, Chile and United State of America, developing a patient centered care professional practice. 14,15 But, even today, pharmacy education continuous to be a barrier to implementation and developing of pharmaceutical care 50 . As long as, how implement the pharmaceutical care in a pharmacy curriculum is a question without answer in some countries around the world. In addition, pharmacy students have difficulties with the practice of pharmaceutical care, despite having extensive knowledge about various medicines, especially in developing countries 51,52 .
According to Storpirtis47, this change in focus also implies that the pharmacy curriculum should be adapted, in order to provide pharmacists with new knowledge and skills. In most countries this change is taking place but not in a very structured manner. Fresco and Silva18 described an example of pharmaceutical care teaching experience showing a description of a course syllabus, methods and teaching evaluation tools employed that demonstrated to motivate students toward this new practice and prepare them increasing their practical skills and clinical competences. Furthermore, Fernández-Llimos and Nunes da Cunha19 designed a coding tree to classify pharmacy practice teaching topic, they included 110 pharmacy schools with 1703 pharmacy practice syllabus related to pharmacy practice area, nonetheless, according to the authors, other studies are necessary to note the teaching of these curricular topics.
Recently, Arason et al.48, refer this type of learning more challenging than just learning content to repeat or apply at a later time. It is necessary to personalize this learning and make the practice of pharmaceutical care “real” for students. How do we facilitate the incorporation of Pharmaceutical Care and Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process (PPCP) into our students’ professional identity development was a question stated by the same author, and the proposal method is to introduce the PPCP early in the curriculum and link it to aspects of the profession students are familiar with, similarly, this approach was described by Martinez-Sanchez49 in 2009.
In 2005, the Cuban government adopted inventiveness to inspire pharmacists to apply this new professional practice, including pharmaceutical care in the Cuban pharmacy legislation. Included were recommendations for didactic and assessment chances concerning incorporation of pharmaceutical care into the pharmacy curriculum, and the foundation for this emerging area of curriculum.16 In 2017, the Cuban Council on Higher Education stated a new curriculum named “E”, consistent with, pharmaceutical care is considered as an eligible topic into the framework of an own obligatory basic curriculum according to the necessities related to the social and geographical context university.17 Nevertheless, limited published guidance is available on curricular structures, determining curricular objectives, topics and skills for pharmaceutical care in the Cuban pharmacy education system.
The Delphi technique has been applied widely in diverse areas of scientific research.20 Similarly, Delphi studies have been valuable in educational settings in forming procedures, standards, and in predicting tendencies.21 The Delphi Technique is a method designed to attain consensus of ideas of a group of experts (via) a series of intensive surveys interspersed with controlled belief feedback.22 Many studies support its to develop and inform curriculum, thus, this technique have been found useful in curriculum development in business, nursing, medicine, agriculture, and technology along with environmental education.23 In addition, numerous studies endorse the use of Delphi technique in pharmacy curriculum foundation. Corvvey and Ryam24 identified a consensus for course objectives for a model global health education course in a pharmacy curriculum using a modified Delphi process. A study by Finn et al.25 used a Delphi panel to develop anatomy teaching within an integrated curriculum as per requirements of the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC). Besides, these authors described the advantage of using a Delphi approach in curriculum foundation. Also, Koehler and Bok provided a solid foundation for Pharmacy Technicians training and curriculum development based on several rounds of scientific research. According to, these authors determined the competency framework may help understand the Pharmacy Technicians role and how to best prepare them for practice within pharmaceutical care.26
The purpose of this study was to define course objectives and topic outline for a pharmaceutical care course in a pharmacy curriculum achieved through the use of a Delphi process among stakeholders in pharmacy education and pharmaceutical care practice. These objectives and topics will be useful to pharmacy teachers in curricular design process for implement pharmaceutical care philosophy in their current teaching.