General practice community pharmacist consultation service: an exploratory patient survey.

Background: The General Practice Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (GP CPCS) was established to allow patients with certain minor illnesses to be referred to a community pharmacy for assessment and treatment.

Aim: To explore patients' experiences of the GP CPCS.

Design & setting: An online survey in two regions of England.

Method: 25 general practices invited patients to take part in an exploratory survey. Descriptive statistics were used for the analysis.

Results: The response rate was 5.1% (72/1423). Prior to contacting their general practice, 14.1% (9/64) had tried to speak to a pharmacist. Most respondents accepted the CPCS referral (77.3%, 51/66), received a pharmacy consultation on the same day (80.0%, 40/50) and were largely satisfied with the amount of time the pharmacist spent with them (82.5%, 33/40) the consultation format (68.3%, 28/41) and the privacy provided during the consultation (80.9%, 38/47).However, most respondents (56.5%, 39/69) felt poorly informed by the general practice on why they were being advised to speak to a pharmacist and did not feel that it was appropriate that they had been advised to speak to a community pharmacist (54.2%, 39/72). Only 33.3% (16/48) felt that their consultation fully met their health needs and 27.1% (13/48) of patients described being re-referred from pharmacy back to their general practice.

Conclusion: In this exploratory study patients were largely accepting of the GP CPCS. Improvements in terms of explaining GP CPCS to patients, selecting patients appropriate for referral to the service and the appointment process may be of benefit.