The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7230 p15
4 January 2003

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Letters to the Editor

The Profession

Why did I bother?

From Mr N. J. Oxley, MRPharmS

I am beginning to wonder why I bothered. Five years down the line, after having been promised a rewarding career, I find myself feeling a tad short-changed.

I have been trained to offer my professional opinion on medicines to medical staff and offer patients advice on how best to use their medicines and educate them about their treatment. Why? To have consultants shoot me down and dismiss my advice on ward rounds? To see specialist nurses with no real understanding of drugs and their uses performing the patient educational roles for which I trained? To be torn between a well-paid, mediocre job in community pharmacy or the low-paid, ill-respected service we provide in hospital? Surely not.

I also worry about the future. Nurses and technicians are pushing up, while doctors seem unwilling to move aside and work alongside us. I wonder, will we be cut out of the equation when employers realise that they can pay someone less to do the same job? Will we see mass unemployment in pharmacy?

What happens when we need to re-educate? Many will leave the profession (as many respondents in my undergraduate research project said they would), creating a worse workforce crisis than the one we already have. Perhaps the exodus has already begun?

At this point, some will wake up screaming, in a cold sweat. Alas, this is no nightmare — it is a potential reality.

Neil Oxley,
East Boldon, Tyne and Wear

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