Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for more information on Anna Leon-Guerrero's 2nd Edition of Social Problems

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Current Sociology
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gilbert, L.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?

To Diagnose, Prescribe and Dispense: Whose Right Is It? The Ongoing Struggle Between Pharmacy and Medicine in South Africa

Leah Gilbert

The aim of this article is to explore the conflict between pharmacists' attempts to extend their discretionary powers to prescribe and doctors' quest to engage in dispensing of medications. Adopting a global perspective, the article analyses issues such as occupational task boundaries, dominance, jurisdiction and autonomy of the professions. It also contemplates the role of the state in relation to these issues in the current South African transitionary context. To gain an in-depth insight into this complex issue, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. The current scenario, as presented in this article, deals with a double bid by pharmacy in South Africa to emulate what has been historically and globally, successfully done by medicine. On the one hand, their pursuit to expand their discretionary powers to prescribe is an infringement on another profession's task domain and, on the other hand, their current success to curb doctors' rights to dispense medications is an attempt to gain control over what they consider to be their professional jurisdiction.

Key Words: dispensing doctors • occupational boundaries • pharmacists • professional autonomy • professional dominance

Current Sociology, Vol. 49, No. 3, 97-118 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0011392101049003007
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?