Madam, – Most high-street pharmacists provide little real value to society. In fact, due to their restrictive licensing protection, the opposite is the case.
They may be “highly-trained professionals”, but the most common expertise practised is to decipher doctors’ hieroglyphics, to read labels and count pills accurately. It was reporting of a failure to do the latter properly that precipitated the recent capitulation by the Irish Pharmacy Union.
A much more effective and efficient dispensing system would require doctors to type prescriptions (maybe even with bar-code – wow!) and allow licensed accounting clerks to control the dispensing – any and everywhere. This would cover the majority of cases; the remaining small fraction of all dispensing could be done by far fewer “highly trained professional” pharmacists, only when required. – Yours, etc,