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Introduction
Pharmacy health service research is rare compared with other health services. Community pharmacies are an under-utilized resource (Watson et al., 2015). In the United Kingdom, most community pharmacies are owned by large chains such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Boots the Chemist and Moss Pharmacy. Community pharmacists see over 90% of the population/year (Anderson, 2000). About 99% of UK's population can get to a pharmacy within 20 min and in the areas of highest social deprivation, this increases to almost 100%, due to positive pharmacy care law (Eaton, 2008; Todd et al., 2015). In the most affluent areas, about 81% live near a pharmacy. On the other hand, 84.8% of the population lives within a 20 min walk of a General Practitioner's (GP's) office in England overall while the figure reduces to 19.4% in rural areas (Todd et al., 2015). The community pharmacy is the preferred location over a GP's office, due to the ease of access (Todd et al., 2015). Pharmacy care is particularly vital in rural areas where primary care physician shortage is greater than urban areas. Furthermore, recruiting GPs to work in areas of high social deprivation is challenging and primary care is inadequate in such areas (Chenet and McKee, 1996; Todd et al., 2015). The UK doctors welcome the government plans to increase the role of pharmacists in diagnosing and treating minor illnesses (Eaton, 2008).
GPs can only allocate at most 10 min of their time/consultation, whereas pharmacists can see patients for 30 min or more (Deslandes et al., 2015). However, in practice, pharmacist can rarely devote 30 min/patient for acute unscheduled care. Most GPs have insufficient time to answer patients' questions about treatments (Petty et al., 2003). Patients view the pharmacist as someone who is easier to talk to than a GP and someone willing to spend more time with them (Hassell et al., 2000). Community pharmacists are sometimes patients' first point of contact with the health-care system. They act as referral agents to doctors and mediators to other health services, so they assume the gatekeeper role (Anderson, 2000). Pharmacists and nurses have supplementary and independent prescribing rights in the United Kingdom and no other country has such extended non-medical prescribing...