From Professor A. T. Florence, FRPharmS
SIR,-Many will have read with interest your item on Boots's withdrawal from the Netherlands (PJ, August 26, p284). Boots's spokesman is reported as having said that the company had offered a "revolution" to the Dutch.
But it was not a revolution that had anything to do with pharmacy. If the revolution was to enable patients to reach the pharmacy proper weaving past not only the lipsticks, hairsprays, baby clothes and now also sandwiches that are all too familiar in the UK version of pharmacy, fortunately unique in Europe, little wonder that the Dutch did not recognise the phenomenal advantage that all this would confer on them.
We still have much to learn from European pharmacy, and Dutch pharmacy in particular, as I have felt at least since I made a visit on behalf of the Nuffield inquiry to study pharmacies there. The Dutch are used to high standards of premises, well qualified support staff, patient registration, computerised records, things that have proved typically impossible here, by and large. It is a great regret of mine that I did not press for more to be said in the Nuffield report on the importance of the environment in which pharmacy is practised, to both patient and to the professional. It is, of course, difficult to quantify the effect, but while the discourse on core values continues in your pages, it is a shame that no-one speaks of aesthetics, the importance of good design and the appearance of the premises in which the profession is practised.
A. T. Florence
London WC1