BRITISH broadcaster, Sam Delaney, is drawing the ire of pharmacists after deriding the profession on morning TV last week.
The former host of RT (Russia Today) satirical show, Sam Delaney's News Thing, hit out at the UK's National Health Service (NHS) campaign to encourage patients to visit their pharmacists to seek advice for minor ailments in an effort to ease pressure on GPs.
Hitting out at the NHS's efforts Delaney suggested it was inappropriate for pharmacists to initiate discussions with patients about health issues such as weight management.
"The Government is suggesting that chemists should be able to intervene and say, "you're too fat, you're overweight", I'm all for doctors pointing this out, if they think it's going to be a medical issue, because it's behind closed doors, but a chemist is a very public place," he said.
"You could be in Boots, it could be very crowded in there and suddenly you're being called fat by a chemist who I think society generally, rightly or wrongly, don't have much respect for anyway, because we think they're pretend doctors a lot of the time," he said.
Taking to Twitter a number of pharmacists have hit out at the misrepresentation of the profession and journalists' ignorance of the "expertise and value" pharmacists provide.
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