An international comparative study of the utilisation of pharmacy technicians
The original ‘scoping’ exercise undertaken for the DH on skill mix in community pharmacy demonstrated the existence of different training programmes for support staff, suggesting that these staff have different responsibilities and perform different tasks compared with their UK counterparts. This study was commissioned to provide sound evidence to the DH as part of its consultation exercise on the use of support staff in the UK.
The intention was to examine how support staff are trained and how they were being used to free up the pharmacists time. Visits were made and observations undertaken in pharmacies in three European countries (Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark), interviews with community pharmacy staff were conducted, and interviews and meetings held with personnel from professional and education institutions to collect information on training programmes.
| Sponsor | Department of Health |
| Duration | 5 months |
| Start and end dates | August 2003 to December 2003 |
| Funding | £35k |
| Principal Investigators | Peter Noyce and Karen Hassell |
| Other researchers | Tanya Samuel and Rachel Mullen |