6^th World Pharmacists & Clinical Pharmacy Annual Congress

Community Pharmacists

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Community pharmacists are the health professionals most accessible to the public and other health professionals in primary health care. They supply medicines in accordance with a prescription or, when legally permitted, sell them without a prescription. In addition to ensuring an accurate supply of appropriate products, their professional activities also cover counselling of patients at the time of dispensing of prescription and non-prescription drugs, drug information to health professionals, patients and the general public, and participation in health-promotion programmes. In England in 2014/15 978.3 million items were dispensed by community pharmacies (92.1 per cent of all items dispensed in the community). This is an increase of 30.1 million (3.2 per cent) from 2013/14 when the figure was 948.2 million. This compares with 85.0 million items dispensed by dispensing practices and 7.8 million by appliance contractors in 2014/15. 14.7 per cent of items dispensed by community pharmacies and appliance contractors were via the Electronic Prescription Service.