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Letters to the Editor
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Primary care
An insult to all those in community pharmacy
From Mr J. L. Woodward, MRPharmS
I read with astonishment the remarks
made by the current health minister at a recent primary care trust meeting on 15 September (PJ, 18 September,
p369). She pointed out that community pharmacy is viewed as slightly
detached from the rest of primary care: that it pays too much attention
to business and not enough to health care.
This is an insult to all those in community pharmacy. Perhaps the health
minister should realise that there are some of us in the profession who
cannot just sit in the paradise of our ivory towers, busily empire building
and dreaming up another useless scheme, wondering what targets we can
set the medical profession in order that they may prescribe further cheap
generic drugs and attain a miserable 60 per cent achievement of clinical
targets — all for a cash bonus, of course.
The community pharmacist needs to be business-oriented because if not
he simply goes into liquidation. His profits must be such that he provides
a free prescription collection service from doctors, he delivers completed
prescriptions, he spends his time giving advice freely, he undertakes
cholesterol testing and blood pressure monitoring freely, he fills dosage
aids on a weekly basis against a monthly prescription — for a derisory
fee.
Oh, to be employed in the public sector of primary care! For starters
we would be able to have our 17.5 days “sick leave” each
year and not have to worry about locums, there being so many pharmacists
now employed in this sector with all their fancy titles. Just a thought,
are there any community pharmacies who have an admission pharmacist on
one door and a discharge pharmacist on the exit?
Perhaps we should all join the public sector knowing that our salary
is always there, we will have paid holidays and there will be salaries
of £80,000 attainable with a final salary pension scheme included.
The community pharmacist would then be able to add an abundance of business
acumen to the scene that, along with his true and genuine interest in
people, would introduce a subject named “reality”.
John Woodward
Acton Trussell,
Stafford
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal