The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7175 745-748
24 November 2001

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  Supervision
  Ramadan
  The Society
  The President
  Community pharmacy

Letters to the Editor

Supervision

Why pharmacists should usually be present

From Mrs I. McBrien, MRPharmS

The article on the supervision debate (PJ, 20 October, p577) did not mention either that the pharmacist is the last health care professional to be seen by the patient between diagnosis and receiving medicines, or the easy accessibility of the community pharmacist to the public compared with other health care professionals. I believe these factors are still important today and a reason why, except for short breaks, the pharmacist should be present in the pharmacy.

However I do think radical changes with regard to supervision need to be made to free the pharmacist from routine work and to perform instead those tasks requiring the expertise of a pharmacist.

At present, a significant proportion of a pharmacist's time is spent checking the accuracy of dispensed prescriptions. With the volume of dispensing carried out in most pharmacies there is little time for detailed scrutiny of patient medication records. I believe suitably trained dispensers with formal qualifications and obligatory continuing education could take more responsibility in this area than they are allowed to take at present.

With an additional computer terminal, not used for dispensing, the pharmacist could scrutinise patient medication records of both occasional and regular patients and carry out a medicines management service.

With regard to sales of medicines, there is no doubt that the introduction of protocols has helped to improve advice given by medicines counter staff. However there is a great variation in the ability of these staff to give appropriate advice to patients and customers. If there were long absences from the pharmacy by the pharmacist the difference between a general sale list medicine outlet and a pharmacy would become blurred.

I. McBrien
Maidenhead, Berkshire

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