What do you think your role is as a pharmacist?

Are you customer-facing empathetic and focussed on “Dispensing, Responding to Symptoms and Service Development? Or do you want to be the triage for doctors and nurses, their front line in the surgery? Some pharmacists are best placed where medicines are developed, manufactured and distributed others are excellent in customer-facing. For years the profession has been pushing to get the pharmacist out from the dispensary and engaging with the public and now we seem to be going full circle and we are to be hidden away in doctor surgeries. There is a glut of pharmacists and a shortage of doctors and nurses and I do understand the reasoning behind encouraging pharmacists to help fill the void and take on a more clinical role. We must be cautious and ensure that pharmacist do not lose their patient-facing and commercial skills as dispensing robots cannot fill the Gap. An electronic voice or a logistics company delivery driver will not be a chronically ill patient confident I fear.