There is a lot of talk these days about pharmacies (what most people call the chemist shop) being more involved in the overall aspect of health, including giving advice and even becoming a first step when you feel unwell.
This doesn’t mean the local chemist can give you a full medical examination and then prescribe the best drugs for what bothers you.
We all know the National Health Service, created following the Second World War by Labour Secretary for Health Nye Bevan, as part of the post-war government of Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee, has been facing problems for the past 30 or 40 years.
Yet the solution recent governments have come up with is to basically go back to the days of mid 20th century pharmacists.
My father was a pharmacist and served with the RAMC during the Second World War. He signed up in September 1939, breaking into his studies at the Liverpool College of Pharmacy, and when he was demobbed in 1945 he was a sergeant pharmacist.
He returned to his studies and was very soon a qualified pharmacist.
Initially he began working life as a manager in Liverpool, Much Wenlock and then Chesham but he wanted to be his own man.
In the mid 50s a business became available in Rhyl, in North Wales and with a bit of help from my mother’s aunt, Florence affectionately known as Auntie Flo, and her husband, my grandfather’s cousin and brother-in-law and fellow soldier in the Liverpool Pals in WW1, my father became D G Pierce, MPS, at 14 Water Street, Rhyl, in North Wales.
The business and property had come up for sale after the death of the former pharmacist and owner Mr C Dixon.
It had clearly been a good business and Mr Dixon had been a much-loved member of the community. Locals soon became aware that my father was just as hard-working and helpful as his predecessor.
The property included our living quarters accessed from a large porch to the left of the shop.
The shop was open during normal trading hours but even after 6pm customers knew that they could ring the doorbell and have urgent prescriptions made up on the spot.
This was in the days when doctors made home visits even at night.
If a doctor gave a home patient a prescription and marked it “urgent” they would often be directed to Dad’s premises to have the script made up.
The point is he would also give advice if someone came in with minor complaints and would make up a mixture we all called Dad’s Jollop which helped with many things from heartburn to an upset stomach.
In all cases, however, his final advice was always: “See your doctor as soon as you can.”
This is how things were in the mid-50s, yet now politicians are looking at the situation in a broken NHS and the answer, apparently, is to get pharmacists to take on work normally done by doctors.
The point is I believe most pharmacists can take on a number of these tasks which would help GP practices freeing doctors up to do other work.
The problem is most of these pharmacists are already stretched to the limit supervising the making up of prescriptions and the general supervision of a busy pharmacy.
It is time the government put more money into the National Health Service to improve the efficency.
Robin's Nest 