Independent chemists 'worst for reliable advice'

If you want the best medical advice, avoid small independent chemists, an undercover investigation suggests today.

Some 48 per cent of non-chain pharmacies gave misleading, inaccurate or potentially dangerous "help" to shoppers, according to the consumer group Which?. National and regional chemists' chains – including Lloyds – dispensed poor advice on 38 per cent of visits, while supermarkets got it wrong in almost a third of cases.

Two large chemists' chains, Alliance Boots and Moss, were the most reliable but they still handed out poor advice in one in every five visits, according to the report. Overall, pharmacies gave incorrect advice on a third of visits. Customers following the advice could have received unsuitable medicine for migraines, missed a serious infection and contracted a sexually transmitted disease, Which? said.

Undercover researchers visited 101 pharmacies in May and asked about emergency contraception, a migraine drug Imigran Recovery and traveller's diarrhoea. A panel of three pharmacists who assessed the advice found problems with sales of Imigran Recovery, which should only be sold after a customer answers specific questions. In 40 per cent of cases, sales assistants did not alert the pharmacist and one in five sold it without asking a single question.

Investigators were four times more likely to receive unsatisfactory advice about traveller's diarrhoea from sales assistants than from pharmacists.

The report is to be investigated by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

The investigation did reveal some improvements since the last study in 2004, including better private areas to discuss sensitive issues. Neil Fowler, editor of Which? magazine, said: "People are increasingly turning to pharmacies for the sort of advice they might have gone to their GP for in the past, but we're concerned that in some cases they're getting advice that is unsuitable and potentially unsafe."

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