Background Chronic diseases have changed the management of patients and their status, to move toward a new “patient-healthcare providers” partnership. Asthma and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) are two chronic thoracic diseases with differences in terms of prevalence and drug delivery process. Little is known regarding patient’s beliefs (B), knowledge (K) and expectations (E) of their illness, medicines and healthcare providers, despite these parameters influencing their adherence, behaviour and outcomes.

Purpose To gain detailed insight into B, K and E of medicines and pharmacists from asthma or PAH patients.

Material and methods For this observational prospective monocentric study, an interview guide was designed and validated to perform the semi-structured interviews (SSI). Each interview was recorded and fully transcribed. An inductive approach was conducted for the remaining text to inventory verbatim. All were classified according to the key ideas to describe B, K, E for each population.

Results SSI were conducted with 14 patients (5 asthma–9 PAH) (mean duration 37 ± 10 min) from December 2013 to April 2014. Medicines were perceived as a “necessity” (6 PAH–3 asthma), a “constraint” (3 PAH) or “poisons” (2 asthma). Three asthma patients didn’t perceive the necessity of corticosteroids but all judged salbutamol and terbutaline as vital. Four PAH patients noticed few people and healthcare professionals who knew PAH and its management. Pharmacists could sometimes be perceived only as “retailers” (2 PAH–3 asthma), “advisors” (3 PAH) or associated with “medicines” (2 PAH–2 asthma). Tasks of pharmacists weren’t well known and defined (5 PAH–4 asthma).

Conclusion Medicines and pharmacists were perceived differently depending on asthma or PAH patients. The ignorance about “what exactly pharmacists do” makes their role ambiguous for the patients leading to difficulties in describing their expectations of pharmaceutical care. More interviews are warranted to improve the B, K, E description of our populations.

References and/or acknowledgements none

No conflict of interest.