Social prescribing literature gives examples of how community pharmacists may want to consider a social prescribing referral.

For example, a customer coming in for a medicine review mentions in passing that the pharmacist is the first person the patient has spoken to all week. This may prompt the pharmacist to ask the patient about what they would like to happen and to find out what matters.¹⁰

This conversation could discuss the potential benefits of local groups that the patient could join, but the pharmacist should also find out whether this is something the patient wants and if they would like more support to do this. To help, the pharmacists should have already researched local services and should know about the resources that are available.

If the patient is interested but says they lack the confidence to do so, the pharmacist can refer the patient to a link worker who could describe the options and provide support to join a group. The link worker (who is employed to meet this need) would be able to provide additional handholding to help the patient find and join an appropriate group.