Health – Why a good pharmacy matters

Pharmacy has changed so much over the past few years that it has  become almost unrecognisable from even a couple of decades ago. Gone are the days of personalised medicine like the impressively effective cough medicines formulated in the dispensaries. Sadly, the pharmacy discounters bring us a world where selling household items such as perfumes and toilet cleaners seem to be more important than helping a patient understand how to take their medication.

The old adage of pharmacy being “the health professional you see most often” became somewhat lost until Covid times brought it back to the forefront, and communities realised that the pharmacists in their community pharmacy were the most accessible medical professionals.

In the face of big box discounters, the true community pharmacy has re-invented itself, ultimately resulting in huge benefits for health consumers with community pharmacies now offering a growing number of services that help to take the burden of emergency care off overworked doctors.

For example, specially trained pharmacists within these community pharmacies are now able to prescribe antibiotics for simple urinary tract infections and conjunctivitis, provide vaccinations for Covid and various other preventable infections, with some pharmacies now even able to provide travel vaccinations. Antibiotics can now be prescribed for strep throat and skin infections in certain community pharmacies, sick leave certificates provided and antivirals prescribed for shingles and for Covid.

Some community pharmacies have progressed even further to provide an integrated approach to health-care where medication is not the only consideration when treating their patients. They treat their patient as a whole, considering lifestyle, nutrition and other factors that might be influencing their health. 

The NZ Herald recently reported that, in a week long study of 68 pharmacies in the Waikato region, pharmacists found a total of 1257 mistakes (mostly caused through issues with IT systems) with more than one in four prescription errors having a potentially serious risk of harm to their patients. The estimated rate of “interventions” varied widely between individual pharmacies, ranging from problems found in fewer than one per cent of scripts to some identifying problems with 11 per cent of total prescriptions sent to them. It really is up to you where you take your prescription. But when it comes to your health, make sure you are with a pharmacy that cares for you.

Just a reminder, prescriptions are free in all pharmacies, regardless of brand, if you are over 65 or under 14 years old.