The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7217 p461
28 September 2002

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Worklife in the States now loses its appeal

‘101 ways to improve your pharmacy worklife’, by Mark R. Jacobs. Pp xx+165. Price £24.50. Washington: American Pharmaceutical Association; 2001. ISBN 1 58212 014 5

Idea number 102: do not go and work as a pharmacist in the United States. I thought that my paperwork burden was bad until I read this. The extra work that the private insurance industry appears to generate had me thankful for the limited bureaucracies I suffer. How do US pharmacists get any work done at all, I asked myself. The lengthy section on whether to bill the patient or the insurance company had me wondering, how do they ever get paid at all?

Having said that, the book is full of some nice little ideas but, unfortunately, it is written in a touchy-feely Americanese that I found off-putting. Many of the "101 ideas" can simply be described as common sense: most of them by necessity will have been learnt by pharmacists before registration.

As an insight into community pharmacy in the US it is an eye-opener, but as a tool for the standard overworked United Kingdom pharmacist it is of limited value. Anyone who has not already grasped these lessons will not have the time to read the book. In fact they will have probably already fled the profession.

Maurice Hickey