The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7196 p597-604
4 May 2002

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Too few trainees in hospital pharmacy

Vacancies for hospital pharmacists are falling, but there are more vacant posts than there are hospital pharmacists in training.

The stark findings of an independent survey carried out by the National Health Service Pharmacy Education and Development Committee (PEDC), and sanctioned by the Department of Health's chief pharmacist's office, are that English and Welsh hospitals had vacancies for 547 full-time pharmacists on 31 July 2001, but that there were only 480 preregistration trainees in the system. As a result, six out of every 10 hospitals had cut pharmacy services or declined to meet requests for new services wanted by clinicians. Shortages also extended to pharmacy technicians, where vacancies stood at 452, with only 205 trainees.

The survey report says that the fall in the number and proportion of pharmacists in grades A to C is less than the fall in the number of posts at these grades because jobs have been upgraded or converted to technician posts. It says that 393 pharmacist posts (one in every 10) has been upgraded because of recruitment and retention difficulties.

The author of the survey report, Dr David Scott from the pharmacy department, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, said: "This demonstrates that hospitals are restructuring their pharmacy departments to cope with pharmacist shortages, but that this is now leading to serious shortages of technicians. Although there has been a small increase in pharmacist numbers, hospitals do not have enough staff in training to fill the current vacancies. About 20 per cent of pharmacists have left in the past two years."

Pharmacy departments have resorted to a variety of coping strategies, including refusing or withdrawing services, regrading staff or enhancing salaries, expecting pharmacists to work longer hours and restructuring to match the available staff rather than their desired skill mix.

Recent Department of Health surveys show lower vacancy rates because the Department measures posts that have been vacant for three months on 31 March, rather than posts that are vacant on 31 July. According to the Department, 5.3 per cent of pharmacist posts were unfilled in 2001. Application of the Department's three-month criterion to the education and development committee survey on 31 July 2001, returns a vacancy rate of 8.5 per cent.

The PEDC survey also recorded staff movements between different sectors of the profession. It found that 146.1 whole-time equivalent (wte) hospital pharmacists were recruited from community pharmacy employers in 2001 while the total number of hospital pharmacists rose by only 87.7 wte. This suggests that more pharmacists are leaving the hospital sector than are joining it.

A separate survey of 419 (268 wte) pharmacists working in primary care organisations (PCOs) indicated that 219 of them (124 wte) had been recruited from community pharmacy and 152 (112 wte) from hospitals.

The survey report comments: "These data, which cover about 60 per cent of pharmacists known to work in PCOs, indicate a significant imbalance in the source of recruitment and an appreciable drain on the hospital sector, especially as staff moving to PCOs are often middle-grade, experienced pharmacists."