The article is generally well presented. However, there are some issues, which need to be addressed. Here are some comments/suggestions for the authors’ consideration.

Abstract

Aim: to compare patient satisfaction between those managed by independent nurse prescribers and
patient group directions users with regards consultation experience and satisfaction in medication
information.
- The aim is not clearly stated. What are compared? What is ‘those’ refer to? Rewrite to aim to make it clear.

Design
- Questionnaires were used for data collection, but they are not the study design.

Results
- As two types of satisfaction (medication consultations and medicines information) were studied, results regarding these two aspects should be reported separated. Statistical results should be included too.

Introduction
- What is the main issue in the current practice? This should be highlighted.

Background
- The study aim should be stated consistently across different sections of the paper. Please check as there is no consistence.
- ‘Experience of nurse provided medications’ and ‘satisfaction of medication consultations’ seems to be used interchangeably throughout the paper. Experience and satisfaction are not the same.

Methods

Aim
- reword the aim

Data collection
- ‘exploring patient’s experience, confidence and opinion on nurses …’: this information needs to be checked. As in some places, ‘patient satisfaction with medication consultations’ is used.

Validity and reliability
- What are the validity and reliability of the two tools? More information would be needed about the tools used.

Ethical considerations
- As the patients were recruited by nurses who provided the services and the questionnaires were completed in clinics, did patients feel they were forced to take part, did they have the courage to say no, and what are the ethical implications? These issues are worth being discussed in this section.

Analysis
- The types of descriptive statistics involved should be reported.
- The scoring system should be reported in the data collection section.

Results

• There are no demographic data of the respondents.
• The results section could be strengthened. The authors only described patient satisfaction, but it would be useful to explore what factors affected their satisfaction.

Heading ‘Patients’ experience of the consultation’
- See the comment before regarding experience and satisfaction.
- Results from influential statistical analyses were not reported in the first part of the section. Did you compare patients’ satisfaction with medication consultations in two groups of nurses?
- P values should be reported.

Discussion

• I am not sure about the use of ‘sexual health patients’.
• There is not much discussion apart from saying the results were consistent with those reported by others.
• More in-depth analysis and discussion of influential factors would make this paper more useful.

Thank you for revising the manuscript. This version is much improved. There are two minor points for attention.

In the data analysis section, it says: “Questions exploring patients’ experience with their medication consultations were analysed descriptively using numbers and percentages for each pre-determined response option by group were presented. Due to the similarity in responses between patients managed by nurse prescribers and patient group direction users, combined numbers and percentages are presented and statistical testing was not undertaken”. However, in the discussion, it says: “Patients reported extremely high level of positive experiences with their medication consultations, with no differences found between patients of independent nurse prescribers and patient group direction users on either experience with the consultations or satisfaction with information about medications”.

Based on the information, no statistical test was carried out to compare patients’ experience with their medication consultations managed by nurse prescribers and patient group direction users. Therefore, the claim in the discussion is not supported by the findings. It says this is not done because of “the similarity in responses”. I would suggest the authors conduct relevant inferential tests to confirm/test if there is any difference.

Regarding Table 2, there are two ‘n’s. I understand the first ‘n’ refers to the number of respondents, but it is not clear what the second ‘n’ next to % refers to, so are the figures under ‘n’. Please check.

Thank you for revising the article, which reads well apart from the information presented in Table 2. Information about the number of respondents is clear now, but information about the ‘n’ and ‘%’ is still not clear.

Should ‘n’ be ‘score’? Regarding the percentages, the percentages in the middle section of the table add to 100%, and the percentages in the last two rows add to 100% as well. You may want to split the table to present the information more clearly.