Rural pharmacists and stakeholders perspectives of expanded pharmacy practice: A descriptive study

Abstract Objective To explore pharmacist and stakeholder perspectives of pharmacists providing expanded services in rural community pharmacies. Design A descriptive qualitative study with an ethnographic lens of rural culture collected data via in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with stakeholder representatives and rural and remote pharmacists. Setting Regional, rural and remote practice settings as defined by the Modified Monash Model MM3‐MM7. Participants Twelve rural or remote pharmacists and eight stakeholder representatives from various government and professional organisations participated in the study. Main outcome measure Macro‐, meso‐ and micro‐level perspectives of pharmacists providing expanded pharmacy services in rural community pharmacies. Result At the macro‐level, both pharmacists and stakeholders agreed that governance is needed to clarify the terms used to describe expanded practice as a first step to developing an expanded practice framework. The meso‐level revealed that pharmacist participants expected expanded practice to improve rural pharmacist recruitment and retention through improved professional satisfaction. The importance of effective collaboration and coordination with other health care providers in a community was described by pharmacists and stakeholders to ensure success of expanded services. All participants agreed that sustainability of these services relied on appropriate remuneration. At the micro‐level, expanded pharmacy services are expected to save consumers’ time and money as patients are redirected into appropriate health care settings. Conclusion Enablers and barriers across policy, health professional, consumer and community levels need to be addressed in order to design and develop sustainable expanded pharmacy services to improve health service provision in rural and remote communities.