The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7232 p80
18 January 2003
PDF* 80K
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The Pharmaceutical Journal |
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PDF* 80K |
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Period-of-treatment fee
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Hospital pharmacyProposed rewards not adequateFrom Ms C. H. G. Gilmour, MRPharmS, on behalf of the Association of Scottish Trust Chief Pharmacists We refer to the Government's proposal to modernise the pay system for National Health Service staff. This is without doubt the most radical of all the changes to be introduced into the NHS in recent times, if not since the NHS was created. The principles of this proposed equal pay policy are well meaning and are to be commended. Nursing staff in the NHS, like other public sector workers, deserve a fair wage that reflects their responsibilities, knowledge and competency. It is therefore to be welcomed that substantial pay increases are likely for our nursing colleagues. However, it has been suggested in some professional press that up to 8 per cent of NHS staff will be adversely affected by the proposals. Rumours are afoot that pharmacy staff employed by the NHS will be among these. Some of the elements of the documentation published by the Department of Health/Scottish Executive Health Department so far seem to reflect this. For example, the proposed unified on-call allowance for all NHS staff could result in a substantial decrease to the emergency duty allowance for hospital pharmacy staff. If implemented, this could result in the collapse of the hospital pharmacy on-call service, a service that is crucial to ensuring individual patients have access to medicines in an emergency. Of the rumours, perhaps the most worrying is where newly qualified or junior pharmacists pay will sit in the new pay scales. Although pay protection is promised, pay cuts of any kind must not be allowed to happen. Pharmacy is a small profession with a limited workforce, where the balance of staff between primary and secondary care is critical. All of the UK Government's pharmacy strategies recommend further changes to skill mix. Part of the aim is to use further all pharmacy staff in clinical activities, so as to achieve the Government's objectives of ensuring that patients get the right care in the right place at the right time. Hospital pharmacy has perhaps led this change in skill mix. Now while market forces will, for the foreseeable future, be a factor in pharmacy staffing levels, there is a fine line between ensuring sufficient staff in the primary care setting meet the demands facing the service and continuing to provide a safe service in the secondary care setting. Pay cuts at the top end of the NHS pharmacy employee scale might only serve to compress the scales below. Taken together, the recruitment retention problem in pharmacy, particularly in the secondary care setting would only be made worse. The recruitment retention allowance proposed in "Agenda for change" must, for these reasons, be applied to pharmacy. It is understood that, in the not too distant future, the results of benchmarking studies of all jobs in the NHS will be published. Again, rumours suggest that pharmacy will not come out of this particularly well. The perception of the pharmacy profession that this will create will only serve to worsen recruitment and retention problems. This will impact on both hospital and community pharmacy. Pharmacy has embraced the modernisation agenda. In order to deliver further significant changes, the Government needs to be fully aware that to do this will require motivated staff who are adequately rewarded. The rewards predicted from "Agenda for change" for pharmacy do not appear to be adequate. They could therefore exacerbate the already severe recruitment and retention problems and will have a significant detrimental effect on quality of patient care. Christine Gilmour |
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