Jeroen van de Pol

125 5 How does the general public balance convenience and cognitive pharmaceutical services the pharmacist as a healthcare provider, many patients still prefer to discuss issues concerning medication with their physicians [29-31]. Non-dispensing pharmacists, based in the GP’s office, were able to build their relationships with patients and gain trust [32,33]. Therefore, pharmacists within the community pharmacy setting are also expected to gain trust and build pharmacist-patient relationships as long as they are capable of providing CPS. Earlier research has indicated that general practitioners do not fully address patients’ information needs. This lack could present pharmacists with an opportunity [30]. A potential barrier here could be the lack of privacy that people experience within the community pharmacy setting to discuss healthcare-related matters [20,34,35]. Finally, some people may regard the community pharmacist predominantly as a commercially driven actor within the primary healthcare service and see CPS as an extra, but not essential, service from the community pharmacy [20,28]. As both professional bodies and policy makers envision a greater role for the community pharmacist as healthcare provider, the profession needs to consider increasing public awareness of CPS [5,6,20,28,36]. Strengths and limitations This study focuses on the general public’s preferences and views on the importance of the availability of different services instead of focusing on patient satisfaction after contact with CPS. Therefore, this study can provide a better understanding on how pharmacists can address the needs of the general public. Also, the Dutch healthcare consumer panel does not recruit participants via community pharmacies, therefore eliminating bias that only participants with a positive attitude towards community pharmacy practice were enrolled in this study. Participants within the panel are also anonymous, therefore minimizing the risk of social desirable answers. However, there were also some limitations. Participants may not have actual experiences with CPS provided by the community pharmacist. This could be due to the lack of need for CPS, preferring the provision of CPS by another healthcare provider or being unaware that CPS is provided by community pharmacists. Therefore, participants may have had difficulties answering the questions regarding their preferences for CPS. Likewise, participants may have had actual experiences regarding convenience and would therefore prefer these above CPS. People with low educational levels were underrepresented in this study. Thus,