Pharmacists are a profession that enjoys high public confidence and are the most approachable members of the healthcare team. For this reason, every pharmacist needs a clear understanding of their main professional roles (PR) and the specific professional functions (PF) that flow from them. The present study was undertaken to thoroughly break down the principal PR into an integrated collection of PF. Materials for the analysis included official statements and recommendations issued by the World Health Organization and the International Pharmaceutical Federation, as well as scientific publications dealing with pharmacists’ professional roles. Critical analysis, concretization, functional decomposition, and scientific generalization were the principal methods employed. By applying these techniques to the ten core PR defined in the “ten-star pharmacist” concept, a consolidated pool of detailed partial PF was obtained for each role. The decomposition respected the principle of complexity limitation, yielding between three and six partial PF per role: three for the lifelong learner, five each for caregiver, decision-maker, teacher, leader, researcher, entrepreneur, and agent of positive change, and six each for communicator and manager. In total, this systematic breakdown of the ten main PR produced a multifunctional verbal model of pharmacists’ complex professional activities comprising 50 distinct PFs. The study underscores the usefulness of this model for formulating professional competencies and expected learning outcomes in pharmacy education programs.
