Pharmacists’ perceptions of their emerging general practice roles in UK primary care: a qualitative interview study

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We welcome the publication of the research by Butterworth et al exploring pharmacists’ perceptions of their potential roles in general practice as a valuable contribution to the literature about this topic.¹

A timeline of reports or policies that have supported the emergence of pharmacists in general practice was presented in Table 1. We note the omission of pharmacist prescribing and suggest that this table should also include the Crown Report of 1999.² This report led to the legislation that permitted adequately trained pharmacists in the UK to be supplementary prescribers from 2003 and then independent prescribers from 2006.³ Pharmacist prescribing in general practice is acceptable to patients⁴ and effective, showing beneficial outcomes in chronic conditions.³ The ability of pharmacists to undertake prescribing tasks that would otherwise be conducted by medical doctors has made pharmacists in general practice an option to address the issue of a shortage of GPs in the UK.

A section of the discussion focuses on the acceptability to patients of a pharmacist consultation in general practice. The authors refer to UK research of audiorecorded pharmacist interactions with patients in general practice which concluded that pharmacists responded supportively to patients’ emotional cues and concerns.¹ We believe that the reference for this study should be attributed to Riley et al⁵ and not the reference cited.⁶

• © British Journal of General Practice 2017