Key Facts on Community Pharmacy
There are 5,081 community pharmacists working in 1,906 community pharmacies across Ireland.¹
7 out of 8 Irish adults have been in a pharmacy within the past month. With over 2.1m visiting a pharmacy in one week alone.²
Community pharmacists are the most frequently accessed and most accessible primary healthcare providers with over 78,000,000 visitors per year.³
In 2023, there were an estimated 92 million items dispensed by pharmacists under community drug schemes.⁴
Pharmacists are the most trusted professionals with 96% stating that they trust their local pharmacists, the highest of all professions.⁵
42% of the adult population live within one kilometre of their nearest pharmacy, this rises to two thirds of all adults living within 2 kms of a pharmacy.²
On average there are 15 visits per annum to pharmacies per man, woman and child in Ireland.²
In total there are 7,480 registered pharmacists in Ireland. 63.7% of pharmacists in Ireland are female and 70.5% are under the age of 45 years.¹
51% of patients ‘Always use’ the same pharmacy and this increases to 83% for ‘Always/Predominantly’ visit a particular pharmacy. This rate is higher for medical card holders.²
Community Pharmacists administered almost 45% of the nasal flu vaccines in children aged 2-17 in the flu season 2022/23. Pharmacists also administered 360,000 adult flu vaccines in the same season.⁶
Since 2007, more than 12 significant pieces of legislation have directly influenced the practice of pharmacy, including the Pharmacy Act 2007, GDPR, Continuing Professional Development requirements, Falsified Medicines Directive 2019 and COVID-19 Emergency Regulations.⁴
Every pharmacy provides a private consultation room, with nearly 440,000 people utilising this space each month to discuss their health concerns privately with their pharmacy team.²
Almost 9 out of 10 people say they are happy to get vaccinated in a community pharmacy & 96% are in favour of the pharmacist being able to prescribe some medicines for minor ailments.²
Pharmacists can support you with many health initiatives including weight management, blood pressure monitoring, needle and syringe programmes and numerous vaccinations.
In 2022, there were 1,400 pharmacies registered in HSE PharmaVax with over 4,200 pharmacist vaccinators, administering 1.3m COVID-19 vaccinations.⁶ Pharmacies remained open through the COVID-19 pandemic to support patients face to face.
References
