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The Society

Pharmacists too busy to protest

From Mr D. J. Fallon, MRPharmS

The current leadership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society seems unaware of the negative attitude that pharmacists have towards the prospect of 30 hours of compulsory continuing education, because pharmacists are too busy to protest. Our leaders seem to forget that 80 per cent of the membership did not actually vote for them. Yet by presuming they have a full mandate they have proceeded with extending the pharmacy course by 12 months and now plan to create extra responsibilities which can only be achieved at the expense of some other aspect of a pharmacist's life. It should be obligatory for members of the Council to read the Journal each week to maintain a perception of reality, and not believe that the average pharmacist experiences any significant free time during the day. We can start with compulsory reading of the letter from A. Rahman (PJ, April 7, p465 ), with which I fully agree, describing levels of stress and dangers of error that exist in many pharmacies. What comments do we hear from the Society regarding working conditions? It is irresponsible to misdirect energies internally, just because there is an excessive budget in the self-education department, when really the direction should be outwards towards the non-glamorous patient interface, where I am aware that many patients have not got a clue, and we are pushed like heroes to make time to provide verbal clues, or provide the relatively useless patient information leaflets.

The Society is supposed to represent the interests of pharmacists, not to try to fool the Government that the appalling physical and mental state of the nation, which leaves us at the bottom of all European league tables, can be solved by educating pharmacists more. The real problem is the unsuccessful policy of short-term health promotions which fail to influence the majority of target subjects. Anyone genuinely interested in health education should direct their budgets towards school interactions, enabling young people to make independent lifestyle decisions about their bodies and future, despite social influences, rather than wasting time trying to explain the best ways to patch up their abused bodies at a later date. Health educators deny the reality that, despite the millions of pounds of funding, it is the uptake and utilisation of their efforts by those in need that is the challenge, and that harassing busy pharmacists will lead them to following the doctors and teachers into despondency and early retirement.

Dennis Fallon
Birmingham

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