In the words of the song, you have to “accentuate the positive” and “eliminate the negative.”

It’s a shame the General Pharmaceutical Council didn’t heed this advice when it presented the findings of a survey it commissioned recently. Apparently, public trust in the health advice given by pharmacists is lower than for other health professions. But wait a minute – a staggering 87 per cent of people trust the advice we give! In any other sector, this would be considered a massive vote of confidence. Public trust in our health advice was similar to nurses (91 per cent), dentists (89 per cent) and opticians (88 per cent). GPs did best, with 95 per cent of respondents trusting their advice.

I think these differences occur because of the way many people perceive pharmacies, especially in chains and supermarkets. Only 9 per cent of respondents had most recently visited a pharmacy for health advice and one in six said it wouldn’t occur to them to go to one. Unsurprisingly, those who visit a pharmacy frequently have higher trust than those who visit a pharmacy rarely. Given that one in five had not visited a pharmacy in the past year, I think that a trust rating of 87 per cent is remarkable.

There is good news for independents: those respondents who last visited an independent thought the staff were knowledgeable (82 per cent, compared with 75 per cent for high street chains), that they provided the required information or advice (81 per cent, compared with 74 per cent) and that their privacy was maintained (70 per cent, compared with 61 per cent). So it’s not all bad; far from it. But I do have reservations, particularly with the subjective way that the survey questions were put.

The question about trust in health advice had four possible answers: “a great deal”, “a fair amount”, “not very much” and “not at all”. Only the last of these options is objective. But still, there are plenty of positives to take. I don’t know what the GPhC intends to do with the report, but a better first step would have been to generate some good PR rather than accentuate the negative.

Pen name of a practising independent community pharmacist. Withering’s views are not necessarily those of ICP