2. Symphony IRI Group. UK OTC Market Summary. 2011. http://www.pagb.co.uk/about/pdfs/2011marketfigures.pdf [Accessed April 2013] “
“Ellen Schafheutle, Fay

Bradley, Sarah Willis, Peter Noyce The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK A survey of 642 pharmacists and 854 pharmacy Selleckchem PF2341066 technicians investigated views on perceived risk and feasibility of pharmacy activities being performed by support staff during a pharmacist’s absence Activities were grouped into ‘safe,’ ‘borderline,’ and ‘unsafe,’ where particularly technical activities were seen as being able to be safely performed by support staff Categorising pharmacy activities as ‘safe,’ ‘borderline,’ ‘unsafe’ could help explore future CB-839 in vitro supervision models Community pharmacists’ increasing involvement in clinical activities relies on pharmacists working effectively with pharmacy support staff. However, little is known about which activities and services may safely be undertaken during a pharmacist’s absence, as enabled under the Responsible Pharmacist (RP) regulations. This study aimed to investigate pharmacy professionals’ views of perceived risk associated with different pharmacy activities and feasibility of delegating these to support staff. Following a qualitative stage, a questionnaire was designed, piloted and posted (with one e-mail and one postal reminder)

in August 2012 to pharmacists (n = 1,500) and pharmacy technicians (PTs) (n = 1,500) in England, identified via GPhC registration. The questionnaire investigated respondents’ views on supervision, support

staff roles, competence and responsibility in community pharmacy, asking to rank perceived risk to patient safety (1 = no risk, 4 = high risk) and feasibility (1 = strongly agree, 4 = strongly disagree) of suitably qualified and competent support staff performing 22 medicines/service related activities during a RP’s absence. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were used to investigate differences between role (pharmacists vs. PTs) and sector (community vs. hospital) using SPSS16. University Research Ethics Committee approval was obtained. Six-hundred-and-forty-two pharmacists (43.2%) and 854 PTs (57.3%) not responded. The majority (pharmacists: 78.8%; PTs: 61.5%) worked in community. In all four respondent groups (pharmacists/PTs in community/hospital) there was broad correlation between perceptions of risk to patient safety of support staff performing 22 activities, and whether respondents felt activities could be safely performed by support staff. However, there were clear differences between roles and sectors. Community pharmacists were most conservative (mobile locum and portfolio pharmacists particularly) when judging which activities they felt support staff could safely perform; PTs felt significantly more confident performing particularly technical activities.