Brief advice

When carried out well, brief advice is an effective way to communicate ways in which people can take their health into their own hands.

It should have the following characteristics:

• Raises awareness of and assesses a person’s willingness to engage in further discussion about healthy-lifestyle issues
• Usually given opportunistically and linked to the supply of a medicine, product or service
• Should normally take up to three minutes and follow this structure:
  – Listen
  – Observe
  – Ask
  – Assess
  – Advise
  – Assist
  – Record.

Brief intervention

If you follow the above steps when advising customers, you may identify opportunities to make positive interventions. Here is a suggested outline of how interventions can work in the pharmacy:

• Often take place when a person responds positively to brief advice or specifically asks for help with a health-related issue
• Should take up to 30 minutes
• Involve giving simple, opportunistic advice to change:
  – Assessing a person’s commitment to change
  – Supplying self-help materials or resources
  – Offering products and/or behavioural support
  – Providing specialist support (if suitably trained) or referring or signposting to specialist support
  – Offering a follow-up appointment if appropriate
  – Recording the outcome of the discussion.