The health professions are engaged in an ongoing and dynamic process involving reflection and adaptation, with factors such as socio-economic and cultural developments and technological innovations compelling professions to respond to changed circumstances. This paper concerns English community pharmacy, where recent reforms provide financial incentives to deliver interventions, which have the potential for pharmacists to promote their knowledge and skills, as part of a professionalising strategy. The paper, drawing on interviews with 49 pharmacists, describes how responses to reforms are not necessarily in accordance with either national policy goals or enhancement of professional status. Debates about professional status and role extension have often focused on health professions' subordination to medicine. This paper highlights the importance and interplay of other factors which help explain the inability to capitalise fully on the potential contribution to professional status, which reforms to extend professional roles afford.
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