A qualitative exploration of how pharmacy professionals in primary care utilise planned protected development time.

Background: With patients developing more complex healthcare and medicine needs, it is imperative pharmacy professionals enhance their knowledge and skills to enable an advanced level of pharmaceutical practice, improving service provision and supporting patient care. The UK Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) is urging employers to incorporate protected time within the working week to facilitate this development. Currently protected development time (PDT) is not well established within the pharmacy profession and there is little qualitative data available about the utility of this.