The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7160 p191-193
11 August 2001

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The Profession

From respected artisans to label stickers

From Mr D. B. Sykes, MRPharmS

On 17 August I shall have been on the register for 40 years. What has happened to the profession in that time? At first we were respected by the public. When we were presented with a prescription the patient either knocked on a shutter or rang a bell; in our own time we opened the shutter, took the prescription, inspected it and made a decision how long it would take to dispense it, told the patient, then closed the shutter again. There was always a bit of mystery about a dispensary, and because of that the public respected us.

Now all that has gone and we are open to one and all. In 40 years we have come from respected artisans to stickers of labels on prepackaged goods. Not only that but we are expected to do things at a record pace so that our patients can return to their high-powered jobs without any delay.

What of the next 40 years? We have a few glimpses now. We have our consultation role. But what perplexes me is that medical consultants have spent many years studying only one subject , yet we are expected to use our new consulting areas to give advice on anything from athlete’s foot to nits? Does not this seem a vast range of subjects on which to give expert advice? What about our chance to prescribe? I suppose now that we are told what to dispense by nurses, pharmacist prescribing would be the next step. But I urge caution on this. With the advent of more consultation by pharmacists, their charging for the consultation, and the start of pharmacist prescribing some time, some enterprising doctor is going to wake up to the fact that the pharmacist is encroaching more and more on his patch and he is going to say, “Enough of this. I am going to start dispensing.” Do not forget: pharmacists need doctors; doctors do not need pharmacists.

So what will be the role of a pharmacist in the future? Perhaps he will be only a supervisor of others putting medicine packs into the back of a machine. The prescription as we know it may become a thing of the past, to be replaced by a plastic card or more likely by electronic transfer from the doctor’s computer to the one in the pharmacy, which churns out the medicine already labelled. That is if we are lucky and the computer churning out the medicine is not in the surgery. So here’s to 2041!

David Sykes
Haywards Heath,
West Sussex

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