Background One of the core activities at community pharmacies is counselling patients on medication to support correct use and to contribute to health promotion. Dialogue is known to be key to ensure patient-centred counselling, but studies show that pharmacy workforce rarely include patients’ perspectives in counselling, especially if they sense that the patient or they themselves will be emotionally affected. A theory-driven education programme was developed with the aim to increase the pharmacy workforce’s mentalizing abilities and enable them to be aware of and navigate their own and patients’ emotions in a counselling situation. The topics in the programme include the mentalizing mindset, mentalizing communication and pharmacy practice. The 2,5 ECTS programme was developed in Denmark and tested in Denmark and the Netherlands. The programme was developed with a user-driven workshop format that included perspectives from patients, pharmacy workforce and proprietors.

Purpose The aim was to evaluate participants’ knowledge of mentalizing in a pharmacy practice context and their competencies and benefits of transferring this to knowledge about how to act and communicate in mentalizing ways in pharmacy encounters, with the potential of establishing patient-centred counselling.

Method In Denmark, 28 participants from 11 community pharmacies participated. A mixed methods design based on the Kirkpatrick levels of evaluation inspired the evaluation. Data comprised written reports with 36 qualitative questions answered by participants upon completing the programme, as well as quantitative measurement of their Level of Emotional Awareness, their Job Satisfaction Measure before and after the programme and a Course Experience Questionnaire after the programme.

Findings The qualitative evaluation revealed three themes: 1) “Awareness of emotions and communication skills is an important element when mentalizing is the goal”, 2) “It’s far more than just a dispensing situation—I now tune into the patient”, 3) “Don’t have to hide behind the screen any longer”. The quantitative evaluation showed: 1) a significant increase in awareness of mental states (p < 0,001), 2) a significant improvement of job satisfaction regarding salary (p = 0.01), prospects (p = 0.04) and standards of care (p = 0,004), 3) that most participants agreed (48.8%) and strongly agreed (39.1%) that they were satisfied with the education programme.

Conclusion The education programme promoted the participants’ awareness of mental states and mentalizing communication skills, enabling them to centre the interaction around the patients’ perspectives. The results are promising to support pharmacy workforce to act truly patient-centred in counselling desk meetings and to prevent or reduce job-related stress and burnout.