The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7223 p674
9 November 2002

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How should the profession respond to pharmacy's poor public image?

By Lloyd Matowe

The public image of pharmacists appears to be on the decline. In the United Kingdom, this image crisis was recently highlighted by the classification of pharmacists as "non-manual", the same category as technicians, salesmen and clerks by Market & Opinion Research International (MORI). Many readers reacted with dismay to this classification (PJ, 31 August, p279, and 14 September, p360). The message coming from these pharmacists was the same: that something needs to be done to address this apparent decline in pharmacists' image.

The question that follows the need to address this poor image issue is how to respond. There are several ways in which the profession could respond. A number of Government and Royal Pharmaceutical Society initiatives have been formulated over the past few years, including the pharmacy plans from the Department of Health, the Crown review and the Society's "Pharmacy in a New Age" initiative. The success of each response may not depend on its merits per se, but on how it is implemented. As PJ correspondents have suggested, most pharmacists seem to believe that addressing such issues as the image of the profession should be the responsibility of the Society. I argue that it should mainly be the responsibility of individual pharmacists to arrest the decline.

In response to the MORI classification letters to The Journal, the Society's head of public relations contacted MORI for clarification (PJ, 14 September, p361). Although clarification is necessary, it does not address the reasons for the poor public perception. It should be the underlying cause that is targeted. The Society should put it across to members that it is a mammoth task for it alone to fight for the image of the profession. In my opinion individual pharmacists with the support of the Society would make the task much easier.

Pharmacists should be empowered as individuals and the initiative should come from individual pharmacists. Only then can they stand as an effective professional group whom the public can identify with and respect. Often pharmacists themselves appear to be at a loss with regards to their professional status. In support of this allegation, at a recent pharmacy conference in Sydney, one of the presenters posed a question on whether pharmacists thought pharmacy was a profession. The level of debate generated by this question among pharmacists appeared to suggest that pharmacists themselves are unsure of their professional status.

So what should we do? To start with, the profession's visibility could be raised through pharmacist-led campaigns to sell to the public the notion that pharmacists do much more than simply supply and dispense medicines. This role should be emphasised as being patient-driven rather than profit-driven and such campaigns should be seen by members of the public to be pharmacist-initiated. If pharmacists continue to be suppliers of medicines alone, then they might soon find that they have been sidelined into a role of "specialised shopkeeper" with an image even poorer than ever before. For community pharmacy, this is even more important with the increased move away from sole ownership of community pharmacies and the increased ownership of pharmacies by large supermarkets.

The profession could also respond by heightening public awareness with regards to the importance of pharmacists' role and their reputation for high standards as drug experts within the multidisciplinary health care team. This requires consolidating their position in the multidisciplinary health care system in such a way that they are seen not to be duplicating services offered by others, eg, physicians and nurses, but seen to be offering something unique to the public. Working together, pharmacists can promote their profession and ensure that patients, other health care providers and legislators know the true value of having a pharmacist actively involved in patient care.

Pharmacists could increase their participation in public health and health promotion activities where interaction with patients happens outside the confines of the pharmacy. Health promotion items such as patient information leaflets have usually been associated with doctors in the public mind and rarely with pharmacists. It is up to pharmacists themselves to change this perception and with it improve their image. Other health promotion activities in which pharmacists can participate include getting involved in health organisations' disaster relief, issuing press releases, participating in health and wellness fairs, and speaking at schools and community organisations. In addition, pharmacists have the potential to relieve the burden on primary care and alleviate the work overload of general practitioners. My argument is not about their ability to achieve this, but that it is up to pharmacists themselves to move into such roles.

As more and more medicines come on to the market, the harder it is to make decisions on the best possible treatments for patients. Pharmacists, with the help of professional bodies and legislators, should seek to persuade physicians that the role of selecting drugs for patients could in fact be dealt with by pharmacists, saving them valuable consultation time. Pharmacists could make this process much easier for themselves in a number of ways, for example, through continuing education programmes. The intended introduction of compulsory continuing professional development programmes should therefore be applauded.

The poor public image of pharmacists cannot be attributed to pharmacist factors alone. Part of the image crisis can be attributed to patient factors. Patients are becoming more and more informed about their health and require better services for their money. Due to the advent of the internet, improvements in education and improvements in lifestyles, clients have access to endless amounts of information. Rather than merely supplying information the pharmacist could play a bigger role in guiding patients towards reliable information sources.

In conclusion, the profession of pharmacy needs to react to arrest the decline in its image. Activities that could boost the image of the pharmacy profession include public campaigns to promote the role of the pharmacist in the community, increased public health activities by pharmacists and consolidating the role of the pharmacist in the expanded health care team. These activities should be initiated at individual pharmacist level with the support of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.