From Mr L. W. J. Chapman, MRPharmS
SIR,-I was intrigued by Mr S. A. Wheatley's letter (PJ, March 4, p370), because I believe that he has got things right, despite Mrs Susan Sharpe's comments on the views of the courts.
People who earn their living by selling things are historically tradesmen. People to whom the public come to buy advice are professionals. It is as simple as that. Giving of free advice is not a professional act. If the advice is good, professionals are very jealous about receiving a fee for their advice.
A doctor may do dispensing, but people go to a doctor to receive good advice and they expect to pay for it. The fact that a doctor's advice is paid for under the National Health Service does not alter that fact. That is the difference between a dispensing doctor and a community pharmacist. People expect to receive free advice from a pharmacist and they generally consider it second best, ie, they would not pay a fee for it.
It is interesting that hospital pharmacists and clinical pharmacists are professionals. They do not sell things and their advice is sought on occasion by doctors and nurses. Their salary constitutes the fee for their services.
Qualified representatives of pharmaceutical companies are tradesmen. They are paid to push sales. The fact that they give free advice on occasion supports their absence of professional standing.
If a pharmacist works in a job where he is employed for his knowledge and advice and he is not selling items, then he is a professional pharmacist. Pharmacists who are teaching are therefore professionals. But few others are.
Again, it all depends on what hat you are wearing. If your advice is paid a fee, then you are a professional while doing that job. If you have to sell something in order to be paid, you are a tradesman.
How does the Royal Pharmaceutical Society stand in all of this? Only God knows, but it does not look too good from the professional point of view because I would say that the majority of its members are tradespeople, and pressuring members to give free advice and dispense post coital contraceptive (or abortion) tablets does not change it; neither does possessing a university education change it, in my opinion.
Leonard Chapman
Toronto, Canada