[Nutritional counseling in community pharmacies within the framework of the French National Nutrition and Health Program]

Introduction: The French National Nutrition and Health Program (PNNS), nutrition policy whose objective is to improve the health status of the population, establishes dietary guidelines to answer priority nutritional objectives. The pharmacist, as the drug specialist, dispenses not only products but also services adapted to their patients' needs such as nutritional counseling in order to improve their quality of life. The purpose of this work was to develop nutritional tip sheets answering to the PNNS recommendations that could be exploited by pharmacists to advise their patients.

Materials and method: Two types of tools were developed: self-test on nutrition, aiming at arousing the dialogue between patient and pharmacist on nutrition, and nutritional tip sheets raising the main advices to be dispensed according to the patients' profiles, with their scientific argumentation.

Results: The implementation of this tool was tested in a pilot pharmacy, where the utility of nutritional tip sheets was assessed in 24 patients. Among the patients who answered (46 %, that is 11 respondents), 82 % (9 patients) considered that these tip sheets were useful to improve their lifestyle. Nutritional tip sheets answering the priority objectives of the PNNS and relatives to the main diseases were most frequently used.

Discussion: It would be sensible to widen this nutritional tool to other pharmacies, especially for the most popular sheets. The implementation of a file listing these nutritional tip sheets could constitute an in-service training tool.

Conclusion: This nutritional device could contribute to therapeutic education provided by community pharmacists.