Table 2 Summary of themes describing the “catalyst” for research use in prescriptive authority

Inform understanding of an issue

Safety and efficacy of pharmacist prescribing

“So we had to be able to marshal our facts and have all the information available and be able to convince people that the data were overwhelmingly clear that this was a safe thing to do.”

“It was definitely part of, kind of, again, that foundational research body… in terms of looking at it basically was the basis for a while, he said there is advocacy, you know, it is a promising practice to use pharmacist to conduct this work.”

Establish a need for a policy

Public health need

“The need for naloxone was quite evident in information and resources that we use and found where [our state] was second from highest for opioid overdose death rates… it was clearly a public health concern and an area where pharmacists should be involved.”

Physician shortage

“…the data that was used was just pointing to the primary care shortages and being able to point to that as a need for expanded care.”

Influence the text of a policy

Successful precedents were followed

“There were others who actually reviewed that data of other similar programmes and brought information from, anecdotal information, from other states to that failed, and that helped to inform us in making this programme as successful as it has been.”

“[Our state] had a long history of allowing pharmacists to do—to give immunizations, for example, we’ve been doing that for a really long time for people 10 and above, and then… we pass legislation that saying in the event of a public health emergency they could give them to kids as young as three. So we feel pretty strongly that pharmacists… in general has pretty wide scope of practice laws.”