The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7497 p425
12 April 2008

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

Related websites
White Paper “Pharmacy in England — building on strengths, delivering the future”

Few people use pharmacies for health screening or monitoring

Less than 1 per cent of the public visit their local pharmacy for health screening or monitoring, according to the results of market research commissioned by the Department of Health to support proposals outlined in the new pharmacy White Paper.

A greater proportion of adults (12 per cent) will seek health advice from pharmacists, but the main reason for a visit is to have a prescription dispensed, according to 86 per cent of the 1,645 adults in England who took part in the research.

Most of the adults questioned (84 per cent) between 28 November and 2 December 2007 said they had visited a pharmacy at least once in the past 12 months — 78 per cent of them for a health-related reason.

On average, an adult in England will visit a pharmacy 14 times a year, the market research revealed, with 27 per cent of them buying over-the-counter medicines.

Women aged 35–74 years are the most frequent pharmacy users, as well as men aged over 55 years. The people pharmacists are least likely to encounter are 16- to 24-year-old men.

People are generally loyal to their pharmacy with 60 per cent tending to visit the same one, although a third of adults will use a variety of pharmacies.

Adults with long-term health conditions or disabilities who live in rural areas are most likely to use the same pharmacy all the time, the researchers discovered.


News p423