Abstract
Introduction: Health humanities constitute an important field of knowledge for understanding the healthillnesscare process, strengthening health professionals’ critical and ethical reflection. Although more developed in some professions, they remain incipient in pharmaceutical education. However, they have great potential to improve pharmacists’ clinical practice, especially when they provide pharmacotherapeutic followup. Objective: To understand how pharmacists, trained in undergraduate programs that did not emphasize care, developed clinical competencies for Pharmaceutical Care. Methods: A qualitative study based on Constructivist Grounded Theory, with the researcher immersed in the field. Indepth individual interviews were conducted, in addition to the preparation of memos and initial and focused coding, supported by NVivo 12 (CAAE: 69327823.4.0000.5149). The analysis resulted in a theoretical model on the development of clinical competencies, from which the category “health humanities and qualitative research,” discussed below, stands out in this abstract. Results and Conclusion: Interviews were conducted with nine pharmacists with an average of 15 years of clinical practice. Three major categories emerged, including “health humanities and qualitative research.” Participants reported that this humanistic approach, made possible mainly through qualitative research, was fundamental to the development of clinical competencies, providing contact with new epistemological paradigms and broadening their understanding of science, care, and their own professional identity. Ethnographic, autoethnographic, and phenomenological approaches, among others, as well as the development of methods and techniques for data collection, interviews, and participant observation, for example, emerged as relevant educational resources, fostering sensitive listening, observation, and reflection on experiences of illness, medication use, and care. Participants identified their direct contribution to clinical training, assisting in conducting medical histories, recognizing and valuing patients’ subjective experiences, and promoting the development of competencies essential to personcentered pharmaceutical care. Theoretical frameworks from the human and social sciences and philosophy enabled pharmacists to question who the subject of care is, how their experiences with medications are constructed, and which forms of knowledge should be considered in the therapeutic process. This perspective fostered a more comprehensive, critical, and sensitive approach to the sociocultural dimensions of medication use. The development of pharmaceutical clinical competencies goes beyond technical and operational mastery, depending on the integration of knowledge from pharmaceutical and health sciences with health humanities, contributing to the development of a critical, reflective, and personcentered practice.
