The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7158 p121-123
28 July 2001

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Community pharmacy

Follow best practice; carry out research

From Dr N. D. Harris, FRPharmS

Three hearty cheers for Andrew Burr for giving a lead to community pharmacists (PJ, 7 July, p6) — I wish him well. It is about time that British pharmacy entered the 21st century. I was preaching Mr Burr’s message to branches 30 years ago and the response was always similar: “Who will pay for the time I spend on this fancy new service? I am too busy anyway.” I imagine many community pharmacists will have said the same on reading your report.

Further, your correspondence columns still have numerous letters about the employment of technicians and the checking of prescriptions, plus your survey on the latter. All old hat! I have always said that modern dispensing is no job for a pharmacist. However, the supervision of dispensing and advising patients most certainly is. If a technician is employed to dispense, the question of checking is resolved automatically and the pharmacist has time to do what is needed now — talk to customers and clients.

Why are we always responding to external pressures instead of taking the lead and showing what we can offer? Is this part of the “English malaise”, and have we entered the 21st century looking nostalgically backwards instead of being proactive and innovative? No wonder new graduates are rapidly disillusioned. And they, too, are also passive, rapidly accepting outmoded existing practices and standards which they dislike and not appreciating that their future is in their own hands.

The way forward is to prove, by following best practice and carrying out good research, that we can reduce the national medicines bill by, say, 25 per cent, and so justify twice our current salaries. What a bargain for the NHS and for ourselves.

Norman Harris
Emeritus Reader in Pharmaceutics (Clinical Pharmacy),
King’s College London

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