The sector is split over whether pharmacy technicians will take over the dispensing process in community pharmacies in the next five years, a C+D poll has revealed.

Fifty three per cent of 165 respondents predicted registered technicians would be in charge of dispensing in most pharmacies by 2019, while 47 per cent took the opposite view, in a Call to Action poll run with Pharmacy Voice last week (March 6-10).

Pharmacists who took part in C+D's Twitter debate on the Call to Action consultation last month (February 28) expressed support for the move. NHS clinical advisor and pharmacist Jonathan Mason told the debate he saw no reason why dispensing should not be handed to registered technicians and it was a "possible future model" for the sector.

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	Pharmacist and PhD student Ryan Hamilton echoed his support. "In my opinion they should be. Many hospital dispensaries are technician-led, and they do great jobs," he said.

Pharmacy Voice chief executive Rob Darracott warned that the sector needed to be careful that handing over dispensing to technicians did not throw the "baby out with the bathwater".

Claire Anderson, professor of social pharmacy at the University of Nottingham, gave examples of how other professions had separated their advisory role from other services.

"I still ask my bank for a lot of advice even though I don't go there for money. [A better example is] to go the optician for tests and advice but buy specs online," she explained.

Last month, pharmacy technicians expressed concern about research that suggested community pharmacists are still reluctant to let them check medicines unsupervised.

Read the full Twitter debate on C+D's Call to Action web page. Pharmacists have until March 18 to submit their response to the NHS England consultation by filling in a questionnaire. 

C+D is running a series of polls on its website in conjunction with Pharmacy Voice over the next four weeks to understand what readers would like the consultation to achieve. The organisation will then use this feedback to inform its own response to the consultation.