[PiggySpeed]

I'm a pharmacist, and I completely agree with your assessment. People are waaaaay over-estimating their abilities here.

I think there's a bit of Dunning-Kruger at play here. People think they can make their own judgements based on the drug monograph and simply checklist over the contraindications/interactions and call it a day. And there are others who share their pills with relatives/family members because "its worked for me before". There's another special group of people who think that piecing together a pharmacological narrative will bring about a clinically meaningful result (it works in theory, so it must work in practice!). Others think statistical significance == clinical significance.

The typical community pharmacist is absolutely not equipped with the tools, incentives, and workplace conditions to assume the role of a GP. We are trained in evidence-based drug therapy management, not diagnosis. I'm also deeply concerned about how retail pharmacy corporations will adapt to this. I imagine that there will be a new metric: prescriptions sold/visit that regional directors will be optimizing for. If not a prescription, then you need to sell an OTC product.

A lot of people think they can DIY medicine. It will be a disaster. I've worked in a very high-income area with a very professional clientele (business owners, health care workers, lawyers, finance), and many are completely swayed by false information or "studies" they read online (because they are intelligent professionals, after all).

We need better access to high-quality healthcare, but not through DIY medicine. This proposal is the result of people running out of ideas and giving up.

[raverbashing]

> A lot of people think they can DIY medicine. It will be a disaster

So, a person having an obvious anaphylactic shock and being denied an epipen (and dying) is not problematic to you because that would be "DIY medicine"

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/12/23/girl-dies-after-pha...