Community pharmacies are balancing between business (selling medicines and other
products) and healthcare (using the pharmacists’ knowledge in order to improve drug utilization).
This balance could be affected by regulations decided upon by politicians, but also influenced by
others. The aim of this study was to explore important stakeholders’ views on community pharmacy
and community pharmacists in Sweden. The method used was that of semi-structured qualitative
interviews. Political, professional, and patient organization representatives were interviewed.
The results show that informants who are pharmacists or representatives of a professional pharmacist
organization generally have a healthcare-centered view on community pharmacy/pharmacists.
However, different views on how this orientation should be performed were revealed, ranging
from being specialists to dealing with uncomplicated tasks. Political organization representatives
generally had a more business-oriented view, where competition in the market was believed to be the
main driving force for development. A third dimension in which competition was not stressed also
emerged; that community pharmacies should primarily distribute medicines. This dimension was
most prevalent among the political and patient organization representatives. One conclusion to be
drawn is that no stakeholder seemed to have a clear vision or was willing to take the lead for the
development of the community pharmacy sector.