Can a pharmacist give advice?

When going shopping, we can always count on the help of the seller. But what if you don’t have to buy a piece of sausage, a book or shoes, but medicine?

Having heard from a visitor a request to “advise something,” the pharmacy worker can express his opinion. But by law, his advice must concern only those drugs that are allowed to be sold without a prescription. The prescription in this case is not a piece of paper with an obscure squiggle, but a document with the stamp of a medical institution. It turns out that the pharmacist can offer a remedy for “cough” or “for bites,” but he has no right to offer “for blood pressure” or “for the heart.”
But this does not mean that you can’t expect any comments from the pharmacist regarding prescription medications: you take the prescription, give the medicine, and goodbye. His duty is to tell you everything about the drug that interests you and what you need to know: rules for administration and storage, features of compatibility with other drugs, dosage, possible side effects.
If the medicine seems too expensive to you, the pharmacy should offer a choice of cheaper analogues, making sure to tell you how each of them differs from the medicine prescribed by the doctor. Or offer a replacement if the required medicine is not available at the moment. In this case, on the back of the prescription, the pharmacy must indicate which particular product the client received in the end. A pharmacist cannot independently cancel what the doctor has prescribed, or give advice like “why do you need this medicine, buy this one?” - he is not a doctor. But you can go to a pharmacy, pharmacy or kiosk for first aid - if there is no other way to get it. There they have the right to treat a wound, measure blood pressure, give the necessary injection, or help relieve an acute allergic reaction.
Before recommending an over-the-counter drug, the pharmacy worker should ask the client what kind of complaints he has, how old he is, whether he has any chronic diseases, what other medications he is taking, etc.
Whether you end up going to a clinic or getting treatment yourself is everyone’s personal choice. But don’t be annoyed if a pharmacy worker asks why you are buying this or that medicine, or insists that you need to see a doctor - this is his direct responsibility.

important!
When issuing a prescription, a doctor usually tells you which pharmacy you can buy the prescribed medicine from. But he does not have the right to dictate conditions, forcing the patient to go to this particular pharmacy, and not to whichever one is convenient for him. He also cannot sell medicines on his own.