Objectives
To critically discuss the need for pharmacists to underpin their consultations with appropriate ‘clinical empathy’ as part of effective medicines optimisation.
Methods
Use of literature around empathy, consultation and pharmacy practice to develop a case for greater clinical empathy in pharmacy consultations.
Key findings
Clinical empathy is defined from the literature and applied to pharmacy consultations, with a comparison to empathy in other clinical professions. Historical barriers to the embedding of clinical empathy into pharmacy consultations are also explored.
Conclusions
We challenge the pharmacy profession to consider how clinical empathy should underpin consultations with a series of introspective questions and provide some sample questions to support pharmacy consultations. We also make the case for appropriate education and professional development of consultation skills at undergraduate and postgraduate level. We contend that patients’ relationships with practitioners are critical, and a lack of empathy can impact the effectiveness of care.
Objective This paper aims to discuss the need to enhance pharmacy professionals' (pharmacists and pharmacy technicians) consultation skills in England and describe the development of a national consultation skills training programme to meet these needs. Methods The Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education led on a project to create a consultation skills training programme for all pharmacy professionals across England. The programme embedded a set of consultation skills practice standards developed by a large task and finish group consisting of pharmacy professionals of varying roles from National Health Service (NHS), private pharmacy organisations and academia. 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
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