Community pharmacists' views and beliefs about the treatment of symptoms suggestive of vaginal thrush in community pharmacies

Objective: To investigate the views and beliefs of community pharmacists ab out the benefits and disadvantages to the customer, pharmacy and pharmacist of treating women with symptoms suggestive of vaginal thrush. Design: Semi-structured interviews. Setting: Community pharmacists from within Grampian Primary Care NHS Trust. Outcome Measures: Pharmacists' views and beliefs analysed using content ana lysis. Results: Of the 26 pharmacists contacted, 19 (73%) pharmacists from 16 phar macies completed interviews. The pharmacists were generally positive toward s the treatment of women with vaginal symptoms and perceived few disadvanta ges. Immediate access to treatment and rapid symptom relief were perceived to be the greatest advantages to the customer. The main problems were custo mer embarrassment, cost and the risk of masking a serious condition. Custom er embarrassment was perceived to be influenced by lack of privacy and the gender of the member of staff involved in the consultation. Five pharmacist s perceived vaginal thrush to be an infection that could be spread by sexua l transmission. Discussion: There is a need to make pharmacists aware of the current eviden ce regarding the treatment of vaginal thrush, particularly that sexual part ners of women with acute, uncomplicated thrush do not require treatment wit h an anti-fungal. The main difficulties that community pharmacists reported with the treatment of this condition were obtaining an accurate history an d this was influenced by customer embarrassment. The gender of pharmacy sta ff and lack of private consultation facilities were suggested as factors th at are associated with customer embarrassment and hence, the ability to obt ain an accurate history.