Table 5 Recruitment methods - illustrative quotes from pharmacists

“People that came in and inquired about smoking patches and… inquired about what they could do for smoking, I would offer them [the reduction] programme alongside the [cessation] programme” PH01

“We’ve had the posters around the window, we’ve tried moving it about to different locations thinking it would maybe catch their eye better at different locations, we’ve also when people come into enquire about stop smoking we do ask them would you like to cut down or are you looking to just… quit altogether” PH2

“I know there was one GP he would send these letters out…we only got like four people ring us out of the whole lot. And only…one of them turned up out of the four. So, it just didn’t get people on as much as you’d hoped.” PH04

“We put up a poster in all the waiting rooms in surgeries, we put posters up in pharmacy, and people who were coming in, we were asking them if they wanted to give up smoking or did they want to reduce smoking. So, those are the main [recruitment] methods we used.” PH06

“We get a lot of referral from our GP, as well as…approaching patients… I gave it as a dual option, they could go for? the reduction method or they could go for the straight NRT approach.” PH08

“the record I keep of the, over the years of stop smoking service, I rang them up and I said, were they still smoking and, would they be interested, and also when we had some customer who came in and we asked them would you like to join this programme, when they bought a prescription and we’d normally ask them if they smoke, or even if they buy a cough mixture ….we targeted about fifteen people.. all of them, declined…we gave out lots of cards… I dropped it in the local surgeries as well but we didn’t get anything back from the surgeries. No referrals or nothing.” PH10

“we tried as much as possible to promote it, the posters and the little cards inside the things and stuff… it was mainly just anybody who…came to us to say that they noticed the poster … I say ‘look we offer two schemes… there’s one that you can…just … cut down, or there’s one that you can stop altogether, what would you prefer” PH15