ABSTRACT
The first paper considers whether health professionals give patients the information they want, or the information that health professionals think they need. ‘Advice provided in British community pharmacies: what people want and what they get’ by Hassell and colleagues explores advice-giving behaviour in community pharmacies with a view to understanding the nature and process of pharmaceutical consultations and consumers’ views of the advice-giving role. It uses ethnographic methods, combining patient interviews with non-participant observation of interactions between consumers and pharmacy staff. It demonstrates that advice-giving in community pharmacies almost wholly focuses on product recommendation and use, and that this advice-giving varies according to whether consultations concern prescription or non-prescription medicines.
