How would you describe your pharmacy's current working relationship with local GPs? You may be co-located with a surgery and already collaborating daily or serve a wide community and relate to a number of general practice teams. Do you have well-established relationships with specific GPs? Are there tensions and a history that creates barriers in effective joint working?

Whatever your current situation is, there is no perfect way of working with general practices. The ideal is something that works for both parties in your unique setting. Complete Reflective Exercise 1 and compare it with your pharmacist's to map out the current situation. Unless specified, use a scale to indicate volumes: 1 = minimal; 5 = frequent.

The questions in Reflective Exercise 2 will help you to assess your existing relationships with GP surgeries. Make notes about your answers to the questions in the table below and compare them with your pharmacist's to share your knowledge.

Perhaps the most crucial considerations are what you know about your GPs, their surgeries and what kind of relationship you have with them. Developing an effective and fruitful working relationship with GPs requires time and investment.

The feedback from various joint working projects nationwide suggests that when the focus is on relationship building and developing trust between clinicians, the range of professional activities and interventions for patients develop themselves.

Practicalities can be ironed out far more easily when there is this understanding and the impetus and will on both sides to make something work.

Many GPs are not yet aware of the full potential that a pharmacist and pharmacy technician may bring to them and their patients. In addition to their medicines expertise, community pharmacists and their teams are uniquely positioned in that they have knowledge of many of the same patients as GP colleagues. This gives a useful starting point in considering how to build a closer working relationship with local surgeries.