The Pharmaceutical
Journal Vol 266 No 7152 p815-820
June 16, 2001
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The Pharmaceutical
Journal Vol 266 No 7152 p815-820 |
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RPM |
The Profession (3 letters)Stop being a doormat!From Mr J. P. T. Yeung, MRPharmS In his the vision of the future of pharmacy (PJ, June 2, p738), Professor Steve Chapman, of Keele University, was reported to have said that there may be fewer pharmacies and “this is no bad thing”. In all my working life in this profession, under successive governments of different parties, we have always been urged to follow the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Code of Ethics and standards, keeping ourselves up to date with the latest advancement in skill, technology and knowledge of recent developed medicines in order to serve and advise the general public and help other health care professionals. In return for our efforts and services, each successive government reduced our remuneration (now down to the bare minimum), but increased our workload. Now, we have a mountain of extra work, such as counselling patients, checking prescriptions for fraud, collecting fees (tax), handing out syringes for drug addicts and emergency hormonal contraception for carefree individuals, collecting and disposing of unwanted medicines, helping and occasionally teaching other health care professionals, etc, all for either nothing or for peanuts. It is high time we turned the tables and demanded recognition, proper rewards and the status we deserve. Our profession has been pussy-footing around successive governments (which want us to do extra work without considering payment) and other health care professionals (who want help and favours without showing us due respect) for far too long, and this should be stopped immediately. We should stand up for ourselves and our profession and stop being a doormat for everybody. With the devolution of Scotland and Wales, the demise of resale price maintenance and the development of electronic prescription transfer, dare I be so bold as to predict that by 2020 the community pharmacy as we know it will disappear and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society will soon follow. What a depressing thought! J. P. T. Yeung Don’t reinforce the commercial imageFrom Dr B. P. Curwain, MRPharmS I note with utter dismay that Unichem is making a link with the convenience store group, Londis (PJ, May 26, p700). Nothing could be better designed to reinforce the image of pharmacy as a mainly commercial activity. This is particularly unfortunate at a time when community pharmacists have a real chance to extend their professional role beyond the supply function and have it fully integrated into the NHS. The more we go down the commercial road the more reason Ministers and senior civil servants will have to think of us as shopkeepers first and foremost. This move appears to be a response to the loss of resale price maintenance. The fact of the matter is that, as reported by Sue Sharpe (PJ, May 26, p715), it was not possible to find any hard evidence that the loss of RPM alone would result in the closure of a significant number of community pharmacies. Shouting a message loudly in the absence of proper evidence does more harm than good and has clearly cost some pharmaceutical bodies, and hence all of us, a huge amount of money. The real dangers are that we end up being the only ones who believe our own propaganda and that nobody will listen next time, if it should happen that pharmacies do not close in droves as a result of the loss of RPM. (I sincerely hope they do not.) Professor Alison Blenkinsopp highlights the importance of keeping records of interventions in community pharmacy and asks pharmacy IT suppliers to facilitate this process (PJ, May 26, p716). With a number of pharmacy systems, we have for some time been able to put notes of interventions on patients’ computer records. Some of us have begun to develop the habit of doing so. It is a helpful way to ensure that information is not lost and is clearly the way forward. What we now need is a way to draw all these together electronically as an audit tool of pharmacy practice. Brian Curwain Need body to represent business interestsFrom Mrs A. Morant, MRPharmS I write in response to Robert Boorman’s letter (PJ, June 2, p752) regarding the way some employers ignore contractual obligations with locums. As members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, we belong to a professional body and not a trade union. Perhaps, just as members of the medical profession have the British Medical Association, pharmacists could do with a body to represent their business interests. Annette Morant |
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