The task of the pharmacist in France is to guarantee the satisfaction of patient demands for medicines in optimal conditions of quality and safety, whether they were prescribed by a physician or are OTC. This is the dispensing process.

Before any health care product is remitted to a patient, the pharmacist carries out a pharmaceutical analysis. It is based on the thorough understanding of the medicine, but also on the pharmacist's knowledge of the patient (age, weight, height, pregnancy, allergies, etc.). If the situation requires, he may take the initiative of cooperation with the physician. All this information enables the pharmacist to accept, suspend or modify, even refuse delivery. The process terminates with the preparation of medicines and suitable recommendations.

The pharmacist cannot follow a patient whose pathological and physiological situation is complex without recourse to a certain number of general indicators such as age, weight, height, etc., and specific indicators, e.g. relevant laboratory results in chronic diseases.

This information is gathered as medicines are dispensed. It depends on the quality of the relationship established with both the patient and physician(s), as well as with any other health care professionals who may be involved. It is obtained from varied sources, e.g. administrative, pharmaceutical, medical, or by simply questioning the patient. It is gathered during the process of the Pharmaceutical Opinion and entered in a patient follow-up dossier.

In the context of his professional competence in the field of health and within the limits of this competence, the pharmacist may have a better understanding of the patient at the moment health care products are dispensed.

The Central Council of Community Pharmacists in France has thus proposed introducing the concept of Pharmaceutical Opinion in retail practice in this country, and has defined it as: « a motivated opinion under a pharmacist's authority on the pharmaceutical relevance of a prescription, a test or a patient request, registered in the pharmacy, and imperatively communicated on a standardized document to the prescribing physician when it recommends a revision, or when it justifies the refusal or modification of his prescription ».