Pharmacists' perceptions of their practice: a comparison between Alberta and Northern Ireland.

Objective To explore how community pharmacists from Alberta, Canada, andNorthern Ireland, UK, describe what a pharmacist does and to compare theirresponses. Methods Two hundred community pharmacists were interviewed using the tele-phone. The interviewer who introduce d himself as a researcher asked two questionsabout the period over which the participants had been practising pharmacy and theway they describe what a pharmacist does.Responses were categor ised into three cat-egories: patient-centred, product-focused and ambiguous. Word-cloud analysis wasused to assess the use of patient-care-related terms. Key findings Of the responses from community pharmacists in Alberta, 29% werecategorised as patient-centred, 45% as product-focused and 26% as ambiguous. In Northern Ireland, 40% of the community pharmacists’ responses were categorisedas patient-centred, 39% as product-focused and 21% as ambiguous. Communitypharmacists in Northern Ireland provided more patient-centred responses thancommunity pharmacists in Alberta (P = 0.013). The word-cloud analysis showedthat ‘medicine’ and ‘dispense’ were the most frequently reported terms. It also high-lighted a relative lack of patient-care-related terms. Conclusions The findings of the present study are suggestive of some movementtowards patient-centredness; however, product-focused pra ctice still predominateswithin the pharmacy profession in Alberta and Northern Ireland. The relative lack ofpatient-care-related terms suggests that patient care is still not the first priority forpharmacists in both Alberta and Northern Ireland.