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Solidarity or dissonance? A systematic review of pharmacist and GP views on community pharmacy services in the UK
Author(s) -
Hindi Ali M. K.,
Jacobs Sally,
Schafheutle Ellen I.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
health and social care in the community
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.984
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1365-2524
pISSN - 0966-0410
DOI - 10.1111/hsc.12618
Subject(s) - pharmacy , cinahl , pharmacist , nursing , medicine , thematic analysis , psycinfo , clinical pharmacy , family medicine , medline , qualitative research , psychological intervention , political science , sociology , social science , law
There has been a strong policy emphasis over the past decade on optimising patient‐centred care and reducing general practitioners’ ( GP s’) workload by extending community pharmacy services and collaboration between pharmacists and GP s. Our aim was to review current evidence of pharmacists’ and GP s’ views of extended community pharmacy services and pharmacists’ roles in the United Kingdom ( UK ). A systematic review was undertaken looking at UK studies investigating pharmacists’ and/or GP s’ views of community pharmacy services or roles from 2005 to 2017. A range of databases were searched including EMBASE , PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts ( IPA ), Psyc INFO , Science Direct and The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature ( CINAHL ). In addition, reference lists of included studies were screened and grey literature was searched. Following the application of inclusion/exclusion criteria, the quality of papers was critically analysed, findings were extracted into a grid and subjected to narrative synthesis following thematic analysis. The search strategy yielded a total of 4,066 unique papers from which 60 were included. Forty‐seven papers covered pharmacists’ views, nine combined both pharmacists’ and GP s’ views and four covered GP s’ views. Study designs included interviews ( n = 31, 52%), questionnaire surveys ( n = 17, 28%) and focus groups ( n = 7, 12%). Three main themes emerged from the data: “attitudes towards services/roles”, “community pharmacy organisations” and “external influences”. Pharmacists and GP s perceived a number of barriers to successful implementation and integration of pharmacy services. Moreover, collaboration between pharmacists and GP s remains poor despite the introduction of extended services. Overall, extending community pharmacy services require quality‐driven incentives and joint working between community pharmacists and GP s to achieve better integration within the patient's primary care pathway.