The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7168 p461-463
6 October 2001

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  OTC medicines
  Primary care pharmacy
  The Profession
  Community pharmacy
  Abbreviations
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Letters to the Editor

Community pharmacy (2 letters)

Poor standards at some independent pharmacies

From “Disillusioned Locum”

I have just read the article (PDF* 60K) “Validating tools for the monitoring of community pharmacy services” (PJ, 1 September, p303). I find the section on “Equipment and professional services available in a community pharmacy” to be a joke when applied to the average independent pharmacy. Whether through financial pressure or through an unwillingness to spend the money, I find on my travels as a locum that:

• Refrigerators are often inadequate, and food is often stored there (but removed before a visit by an inspector). The maximum/minimum temperature recording is often done on a spurious basis.
• Few pharmacies have used tablet counting machines in the past few years.
• Hygenic facilities for carrying out pregnancy tests are not available in most pharmacies; often there is no second sink. Hot water is not available from a tap in more than half the places that I work in. Even the cold water supplies and the state of the sinks leave much to be desired. And the provision of clean hand towels is a rare luxury.
• The standard of cleanliness in most pharmacies leaves much to be desired. Dusty shelves and inadequately rotated stock reflect the general drift away from professionalism.
• The facilities or even the willingness to offer diagnostic tests for blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels are almost totally absent. The common excuses are that it is not sufficiently remunerative or that there would be no demand.
• It is rare to see a whole set of clean graduated conical measures in a pharmacy. Measures are often chipped, or have broken bases.
• Ointment slabs are a rare sight. Often, all that is provided is a square of glass, frequently sporting at least one dangerously sharp edge. Spatulas are old and stained, and often look as though they have in the past been used unsuccessfully as screwdrivers.
• Controlled Drugs cabinets are often left open, or with the key in the lock.
• Virtually no pharmacy has a maintenance contract for weighing scales — indeed, some pharmacies have no scales or weights visible at all.
• Badly fitted dispensaries with inadequate shelving, poorly indexed drug citings, and illogical positioning of stock are the norm, not the exception.
• Often the standard of dress is not as it should be.

Compared to our continental colleagues, we really are shopkeepers, whatever we fancy ourselves to be. The will to improve is lamentably absent. And I cannot exempt our inspectors, who, in my view, do not do their job thoroughly.

“Disillusioned Locum”
(297/3)

Non-starter

From Mr R. B. A. Johns, MRPharmS

Last week (PJ, 29 September, p426), B. J. Hewitt correctly identified as the cause of low remuneration the fact that, of the professionals he mentions, only the community pharmacist (in order to survive) trades in goods not related to the service which his training has fitted him to provide. More concisely, the pharmacist has customers; the others have clients.

Unfortunately, Mr Hewitt’s suggested remedy is a non-starter. Inherent in all trading is competition, and he would find that whatever he charged for his services would be immediately undercut by a fellow-pharmacist, either self-employed or in the pay of a multiple or supermarket.

Ideally, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in conjunction with other pharmacy associations would emulate other professional associations and introduce a scale of fees for the various services we provide, treating any departure from that scale as a literally unprofessional attack on a fellow-member.

R. B. A. Johns
Boston, Lincolnshire

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