You may have heard scare stories about pharmacists being replaced by robots. If you choose to believe them, our skill set could easily be replaced by our automated friends, leaving us languishing in the dole queue.

But there is simply no substance to these fears. Nowhere in the world has set a precedent of ‘culling’ pharmacists from community pharmacies. Nowhere has replaced us wholly with remote supervision and automation. And I don’t believe this will ever be the case.

Community pharmacists have so many areas of expertise in which they remain unchallenged – I counted 10 unique selling points (USPs) without even trying. Here are the main fields in which I believe we are the unrivalled experts:
 

1. Providing personalised medicines information to the public and other community-based healthcare professionals.
    
2. Screening medical and non-medical prescribing for clinical appropriateness at the point of supply.
    
3. Using and interpreting the BNF. GPs and nurses both use the BNF but the pharmacist has superior knowledge of this resource because of its intensive use in the undergraduate degree.
    
4. Compounding and making up extemporaneous preparation.
    
5. Applying expert knowledge of dosages and medicinal chemistry to ensure patients receive the medicines most suited to their condition. We know, for example, the difference between Fucidin cream and ointment and we can switch dosage forms from tablets to capsules when one or the other is unavailable. This is particularly important at a time when stock shortages continue to wreak havoc – how many times have community pharmacists been contacted by GPs recently regarding the unavailability of Eumovate and asking for an alternative?
    
6. Recommending over-the-counter (OTC) medicines while taking into account legislation, indications and our knowledge of the drugs. We currently have to do this without access to patient records. True, pharmacy staff can also offer advice – but they do not have the same in-depth training as pharmacists in this area.
    
7. Diagnosing and treating minor ailments without an appointment.
    
8. Sorting out patient conditions to determine which are self-limiting, which can be treated by OTC medicines and which need further investigation and treatment by the GP.
    
9. Safely and effectively supplying all categories of medicines. This includes doing the final check or supervising the accuracy checking technician in doing the final check, but it is much more than that. Pharmacists supervise the entire process – from the patient handing in their prescription to making a supply. This process includes:

• checking prescriptions for legal validity and taking action if the prescription is not legally valid
• checking prescriptions for clinical appropriateness and taking action if the prescription is not clinically appropriate by liaising with the relevant clinician, eg GP, dentist or nurse prescriber
• giving advice on how and when to use medicines, their effect and advice on adverse effects and the action to take if these are experienced
• emergency supplies of prescription-only medicines based on clinical need.

10. Being readily available – for 100 hours a week in some pharmacies – to the public in high streets, shopping centres, retail parks and medical centres. No other healthcare professional can be accessed without an appointment, seven days a week.

Community pharmacists need to recognise and have more confidence in the many activities and skills that make us unique as clinicians. These USPs should help us do this.

Are there any expert skills and activities I’ve missed? If so, please let me know and I will add them to my list.

Samir Vohra is a community pharmacist, lecturer in pharmacy at Preston's College and founder of The Pre-Reg Training Company

Can you add to Samir's list of community pharmacists' USPs?

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