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Background and study aims: Many people drink more alcohol than is healthy. This study aims to find out if advice given by pharmacists can change drinking behaviour. This service is commonly provided by general practitioners (GP) or nurses. Our research team would like to find out if this service can also be offered in community pharmacies. Who can participate? To take part you need to be, 18 years old or over, drink alcohol and not currently be in treatment for alcohol problems. You need to have a home address in the UK, and must be able to speak, read and write English sufficiently to take part in the study. You would need to be able to access a community pharmacy that is participating in this study. To take part you will need to use the pharmacy for one of the following activities: 1. Making a general health queries or seeking advice which could be linked to alcohol use 2. Receiving pharmacy services for smoking cessation, review of medication use, general health check, emergency hormonal contraception. 3. Receiving treatments with prescriptions for cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, diabetes and gastric problems 4. Buying smoking cessation aids, gastrointestinal remedies, sleep aids and central nervous system depressants. What does the study involve? If you agree to take part, the pharmacist will ask you questions in the private pharmacy consultation room, in confidence, about your alcohol use. From your responses, the pharmacist will be able to decide whether you could participate in the study. You may have your drinking assessed and be informed about other alcohol services. If you are eligible to participate in the study the pharmacist will find out which type of intervention you will receive. This will not be known to you or the pharmacist until just before you are about to receive an intervention. This study is being done in this way as we don’t know the effects of pharmacists providing advice on alcohol to the public. To find out, we need to compare the two treatments to see which is better. Both will consist of a short conversation with the pharmacist about your drinking which is expected to take between 5 to 10 minutes. Which one you get will be decided by chance. Whichever treatment you receive, the pharmacist will ask you for your contact details and other information about yourself. You will then be telephoned twice by the researcher. The first telephone call will be within 2 weeks of you participating in the pharmacy study and you will be asked to confirm your contact details. The first telephone call is expected to take about 2 to 3 minutes. The second telephone call will be approximately 3 months later to ask about your drinking, general health and your experiences of participating in this study. It is expected the telephone interview will take approximately 10 to 15 minutes. During this telephone call you will be invited to take part in another telephone interview about your experience of taking part in this study. Some people, who are interested will be contacted to arrange a convenient time for this third telephone call. This telephone conversation, about your study experience, will be tape recorded so we can get an accurate picture of your experience of participating in the Pharmacy Alcohol Study. What are the possible benefits and risks of participating? We cannot promise the study will help you, but the information from this study will tell us if alcohol interventions delivered by pharmacists to their customers can change drinking behaviour. There are no known risks of participating in the trial. Where is the study run from? This study is being organised from King’s College London. There are 17 community pharmacies participating in this study and all are located within Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust, London, United Kingdom. When is study starting and how long is it expected to run for? The study is will be open to participants, from approximately May 2012 and until 17th February 2013. Who is funding the study? Pharmacy Practice Research Trust Who is the main contact? Ms Ranjita Dhital [email protected]

Inclusion criteria

• Topic: Primary Care Research Network for England; Subtopic: Not Assigned; Disease: All Diseases

Links

• isrctn
• ictrp