Of these, 65 met the initial screening criteria and were sent on for full-text review. We then excluded 42 additional studies by virtue of not qualifying as RCTs, not focusing on pharmacists as diabetes educators, not focusing on diabetic patients or not focusing on pharmaceutical

care. One study was excluded when we could not determine whether find more the study was randomized and were unable to receive clarification from the author.[15,16] A total of 23 articles reporting on 16 separate studies met the inclusion criteria for this review (see Table 2).[17–39] We located 12 published pieces related to the included studies. These publications were specifically examined to determine whether they included additional details on the communication component of the original study. The included studies represent a variety of pharmacy practice researchers conducting research in the USA, Australia, Canada, Sweden, India,

Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and Thailand (see Table 2). In the majority of cases, the research was conducted in medical clinics. Five projects took place in community pharmacies,[25–27,32,33,38] while one[19,20] took place in the corporate head office of a large community pharmacy chain. In 15 of 16 studies, the pharmacist–patient interactions were reported as face-to-face communication or through telephone conversations. In the remaining GDC-0068 molecular weight study, pharmacists facilitated group sessions. In seven studies, pharmacists first spoke to participants in person and then followed-up via telephone. The published articles did not indicate whether those pharmacist–patient interactions that took place in community pharmacies were held in private. Researchers used various terms to report on pharmacists’ communication-based services. Pharmacists were reported

as providing, for example, education, counselling, advice or instruction (see Table 2). All but one study[21] Racecadotril reported that pharmacists had positively influenced patients’ health outcomes. Most studies relied exclusively on short-term health outcomes, questionnaires or changes in drug therapies as evidence of pharmacist–patient communication. Health outcome measures included changes in biological markers such as blood glucose levels, HbA1c results, blood pressure measurements or cholesterol levels.[17,18,21–23,26–39] Questionnaires focused on patients’ disease and drug knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or quality of life.[17–22,29–39] Eight studies documented pharmacists’ identification of drug-related problems.