Guidance

[Dina342]

I require your guidance on where I should look to find information on future of community pharmacies in terms of the services they will provide. Majority of the information that currently exists, is already in force, do you recommend any web pages that would help me gain this information?

[johnep]

Presumably this is a student project?
johnep

[shan]

GOOGLE "future of community pharmacies in terms of the services they will provide in UK" may help

[Dina342]

Thank you for responding. Yes it is, its a small subsection of a project and I have to provide strong references for where I get it from. Shan, I have tried that already. I've tried everything I can so far, which is why I am now asking for some form of guidance. All the services I've seen are existing services (diabetes etc), but nothing on services they will start to provide in the next few years. The issue with this is, I need strong evidence that they will start providing this soon, from now to 2014. All the documents stating services are quite dated and these services already exist.

[johnep]

"they will start to provide". Nothing has been said that is definite. Sometimes it is just wishful thinking, other times that pharmacy 'may' be able to do so and so.
However, we have tried to provide services, only to find they have been hijacked by the Drs. Smoking Cessation comes to mind. We did extensive training at our own expense to become accredited, only to find the Drs taking it over. Free services such as Blood Pressure and Diabetic testing have been relatively successful BECAUSE THEY ARE FREE. Ie everyone wants the chemist to provide services for nothing, as soon as a fee is given by the NHS, the Drs grab it.
Where the service is pharmacy specific like MURs, then the multiples see it simply as an income stream and 'bully' their pharmacists into doing MURs whether needed by the patient or not. The service then deteriorates into just a money making exercise. Rather like the Drs in the US supposed to put pts forward for hysterectomies as long as they were 'female, fat and over 40'.

Probably you can find no projected services that 'will' take place', because there are none.
johnep

[shan]

Right said Johnep.
Many of the services currently are not provided by all pharmacies and also the service pecification varies from PCTs to PCTs. Anything related to drawing more patients to the pharmacy can be a service as long as it is intended to provide either a health benefit or as an information source or lifestyle modification etc. So go to the pharmacy where the interview is and find oiut what they offer and then decide what else they can offer or think broadly and hypothesise what service can you provide in future that can benefit the patient and the pharmacy business.

[bleepholder]

could always try department of health website...i'm sure there are a few white papers out there on pharmacy in the future...alternatively google "pharmacy in the future"

i doubt they will come up with services that will be implemented, but may give you an idea of the direction in which pharmacy is going over the next few years

[Pharmanaut]

The only funded services we will get are the grunt ones that are not glamorous enough for our medical and nursing colleagues.

I'll start the list off with DOOP (ie waste/returned medicines disposal).

[Dina342]

Thank you all for your replies. I was confused because I couldn't find any possible services that they may want for the future either with a solid reference. I will look into everything you all suggested, thank you for your replies