Community pharmacy needs to make research part of everyday practice in order to prove the impact the sector can have on patient outcomes.

Speaking to delegates at the 2015 Royal Pharmaceutical Society conference, Tracey Thornley, an honorary professor at Nottingham University’s School of Pharmacy, said: “This is really important at a time when people are thinking carefully about how and where to spend money.” It wasn’t just about demonstrating clinical effectiveness, she added, but also how it affected patient safety and experience, and the value for money it offered to the NHS.

Evidence collection and audits were two examples of ways community pharmacy could relatively easily contribute to the research agenda, Professor Thornley continued: “We must work closely with academics who are used to doing this so research can be published and made more widely available and accessible.” Publication had the added benefit of providing a way to showcase exactly what pharmacies were doing, she said, though she stressed that it was important to avoid “research for research’s sake”.

“A paper published in 2014 said that patients from all demographic areas found pharmacy flu schemes convenient and accessible and led to an increase in overall vaccination rates. Along with work done in the Isle of Wight, London and West Yorkshire, this proved that pharmacy can make a difference,” Professor Thornley said. Community pharmacies had provided the data that the research was based on, she stated, suggesting that this work was instrumental in the development of the flu vaccination service that has just been introduced across England.