Since before I began my career in pharmacy, there has been a drive to get pharmacists "out of the dispensary", in a bid to better utilise their medicines expertise with patients. This sounds great- we have unique clinical knowledge and skills that we have always wanted to use more to make sure medicines are used effectively, safely and efficiently.
For a patient to use a medicine effectively, they need to actually have it in their possession. There is no getting away from the fact that dispensing prescriptions remains a large part of the community pharmacy business model (leaving aside concerns about the contract and reimbursement etc for now). However, dispensing remains the frumpy friend of the drop dead gorgeous, charismatic clinical side of pharmacy. It seems that these days it is seen as repetitive drudgery: the smartie counting and label sticking that we hear so much about. It is, in short, a waste of pharmacists' time, and is something the profession as a whole seems to unquestioningly want to leave behind.
I believe, however, that it is pharmacy's unique selling point. Its only through dispensing that a prescriber's directions are translated into reality. We can prescribe and advise on the most efficient use of medicines imaginable, but if the patient doesn't physically have the right medicines and know how to use them, all of that is pointless.
Yes, there are ways to reduce the pharmacist's input in the dispensing process. There are robots, accredited checking technicians etc. But a prescription still needs to be clinically checked- and that requires the unique skills, knowledge, and abilities that only pharmacists have.
But lets say we step away from dispensing and move in a purely clinical direction. We sit in a room and do reviews of patient's medicines, answer queries, prescribe medicines, monitor and screen patients. Does this sound familiar to you? It sounds to me like the sort of thing a GP does. So, why do pharmacists exist? What do they add to the healthcare picture? Doubtless such pharmacists would be useful, but the profession would become more nebulous, the edges of our role more diluted and less defined.
In my eyes it is our practicality, our ability to supply essential medicines in a safe and effective way to patients that defines us as a separate profession. That, to me, doesn't have to just mean sticking labels on boxes, and doesn't mean that the profession has to be at a standstill. I just think that we need to stop putting ourselves down and accept and be proud of our role in supply. For years we have been declaring ourselves as able to provide new and more clinical services- and we can. But we need to make sure that we define and build on our niche to give us the solid foundations we need to start branching out.
We pharmacists are an interface. Our role is as go-between, and a bloody important role it is. We are go-between a patient and their GP or their consultant, or whoever. Or, we are a go-between the patient and complex medicines information- we can, crucially, convert difficult to understand evidence into patient friendly terms. We can explain what they read in the paper or on the internet, what the directions of a reducing dose are, help them to navigate through the overwhelming choice of medicines over the counter. We are a go-between the drug manufacturing plants and the patient's bathroom cabinet. And the thing that underpins this role is our accessibility. And the reason we are so accessible is because- wait for it- we dispense prescriptions.
If you ask me (not that anyone will), we need to stop thinking of dispensing as the poor relation and see it for just how useful it is.
Hxxx
