My spirits rose when I read an advertisement in a recent Pharmaceutical Journal for a community pharmacist at a salary of £50,000 per annum. At last, I thought, belated recognition for our experience and service. Then I read on. The hours were 9am to 7pm from Monday to Saturday — at 60 hours per week, something like 3,000 hours per year, this works out at about £16.50 per hour. Over lunch with a friend, an unqualified insurance agent, a few weeks ago, he expressed horror that our profession should receive such miserly dividends. Almost simultaneously, the letters columns of The Journal have contained discussions of the merits or otherwise of locums, including one letter from a fellow locum who has regularly worked (with help) in an environment where up to 450 prescriptions have been dispensed daily. I have to confess that the maximum number I have dispensed single-handed has been 300 (from 8.30am to 7pm). On one occasion I spent a week in a well-regulated pharmacy where 400 to 500 items was the norm, but there the owner employed at least four people at all times, so there was no problem. Nearly 30 years ago, I employed an excellent young man for a month and was sorry when he expressed a wish to return to his roots in the north. Quite by chance, I met him a few weeks later when he told me that in his current pharmacy in the heart of an industrial city they had dispensed 800 prescriptions in a day — but with three pharmacists, three dispensers and a couple of schoolchildren for two hours each day to fill bottles with 20 Penbritin capsules and 200ml Benylin, ready to be grabbed by the first hand that needed them. It was about then, as some older readers may recall with fascinated horror, that an employee pharmacist appeared before the Statutory Committee for taking dexamphetamine for his own use‚ surely nothing more serious can befall one of us. Investigation proved, however, that this unfortunate pharmacist was dispensing 10,000 prescriptions a year on his own. The superintendent pharmacist expressed no surprise at this workload and stated that he himself could manage for the three weeks in the year that his manager was on holiday. (Think of it — a whole three weeks!) I am sure I was not alone in mentally congratulating the committee for the pragmatic course it took in exonerating the employee and reprimanding the superintendent. It also insisted that the poor employee be given assistance. Did I not read somewhere that, once the daily prescription count exceeded 100 items, a pharmacist needed dispensing help? The community pharmacist, even as a locum, has many duties to perform in a day apart from dispensing — counselling, counter-prescribing, answering telephone queries, supervising staff and counter sales, and the like. The locum may not have the distractions of calls from representatives, accounts, filing and the like, but this is usually compensated by the fact that he or she is almost certainly slower than the regular pharmacist owing to a lack of familiarity with the dispensary and the computer. Despite the adverse criticisms made recently in The Journal about lazy, inefficient, slovenly and distracted locums, my own experience in over 20 years as a proprietor had been that the locum is keen, hard-working and eager to please, and will fill any free time doing those odd jobs that the owner rarely has time to do, like dusting, cleaning, tidying up and checking expiry dates. In addition, if he is experienced, he may well be able to assist the proprietor with suggestions and ideas culled from other pharmacies, which may lighten the pharmacist's load. I was frequently grateful for constructive comments made by my own locums and, in my own time carrying out locum duties, I have often made a point of providing written suggestions designed to help out the incumbent. The locum can rarely walk away leaving unfinished business. There is no question of coming in early to complete the previous night's work. At the end of each day, he is on a deadline to finish the work, place the orders, do the filing, cash up, write notes and leave the dispensary immaculate — not always easy when the member of staff with the keys is looking at her watch because she has a bus to catch. Several thoughts have arisen out of my contemplation of that one advertisement in the PJ? The first was, what an underpaid profession we have become. At graduation, I was offered £850 per annum (in 1961) which was probably about double the average wage for a working man and 50 per cent higher than that of a white-collar worker. Assuming that a current average wage is about £18,000 pa suggests that a pharmacist's starting salary should be in the region of £28,000 to £30,000. I have read that graduates in any discipline can currently expect starting salaries of £18,000 to £25,000. Is the pharmacist, with his or her qualifications, intelligence and responsibility, not worth at least a modicum above the graduate in media studies? Yes, of course, the degree is a starting point. It does not automatically qualify one as a perfect community pharmacist — there is still so much to learn. Unfortunately, this financial discrepancy does not stop there. Once qualified and established in a position, the good graduate can expect to make rapid progress up the management and salary scale. But the same opportunities do not apply to community pharmacists; they are on something like maximum earnings from day one, unless they are able to run their own businesses which, if successful, might earn them a good living. (Most youngsters have little hope of working for themselves these days.) But £50,000? I think not. Then there is the workload. Look again at that job opportunity. Look at the hours. How can anyone be expected to carry out professional responsibilities for 10 hours a day, six days a week? Most of us in the community role will have experienced, usually late in the day, that momentary panic when we think we have made some irredeemable mistake, when the brain ceases to function, when exhaustion sets in. In our sentient selves, we usually realise that our panic is groundless. But there must come a time when our professional defences fall. And in my case, like everybody else's, it is likely to happen at 6.30pm when I have had no lunch or tea, been working non-stop for nine and a half hours and it is still only Monday! I see, however, too many of my colleagues forced into working these absurd hours, either at the hands of demanding employers or because they are desperately trying to shore up their own businesses. Being self employed, I can allow myself to work this long if I choose to, but surely there are restrictions on the number of hours worked by an employee, with details of the regular breaks to which they are entitled. The trouble is that as long as young pharmacists are prepared to put up with such conditions employers will be able to get away with it .
Mr Wiseman is a pharmacist from Cobham, Surrey