From Mrs E. O’Neill
SIR,—It is shocking the rate locum pharmacists get paid to “work”
in our pharmacy. Some of the things they get up to are outrageous. To name a
few things: reading all the newspapers they can buy, playing games on computers,
browsing the internet, using the e-mail, drinking unlimited tea and coffee,
using the telephone for personal calls mainly to book the next locum job or
arrange for holidays, sitting down comfortably for untimed lunch, and not forgetting
the mobile telephone which rings in the middle of dispensing or when talking
to a patient.
When it comes to working, it is a nightmare for us shop assistants. I have to
drag locums out to help in counter-prescribing or dispensing a prescription.
They fail to reorder goods sold or given out on prescriptions on numerous occasions
which, no doubt, leaves the next customer dissatisfied. They forget the golden
rule that I have been taught that “a lost sale is a lost customer”.
I can understand that there is a shortage of good pharmacists but it seems that
as long as they are qualified they can just come for a rest in our pharmacy.
I can only blame the locum agencies, which artificially keep on increasing the
rates without regard to the National Health Service remuneration. There does
not seem to be any difference in rates between experienced and inexperienced
pharmacists. Pharmacists normally working in hospitals or industry do not have
sufficient knowledge of community pharmacy and yet risk working in community.
It is about time the profession faced up to the problems facing us pharmacy
assistants.
E. O’Neill
London W3