The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7326 p748
20 November 2004

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· New contract (12)
· Apothecaries
· Overseas members
· Preoperative association
· Boots the Chemists
· Levothyroxine
· Complementary medicine
· Retention fee
· Preregistration exam

Letters to the Editor

Retention fee

Resent being pushed into doing locums

From Dr S. J. Marshall, MRPharmS

My current post combines knowledge of health and safety issues, first aid, over-the-counter medicines, handling of incontinence, logistics, budgeting, personnel matters, expectation management and conflict resolution. I am on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week with no holidays. Am I the manager of a large multiple? No. I am paid nothing and I love it. I am a full-time, stay-at-home mum. I have decided to take time out of my pharmacy career to enjoy raising my children. Last week, feeling I really should re-establish contact with the pharmacy world with a view to perhaps working once the children are older, I attended a local branch meeting at which a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council was speaking. It was there that I learnt that the part-time fee is to be scrapped and I am ashamed to say I cried my eyes out. To those at home caring for children and unpaid, the new £256 retention fee is greatly distressing, and the non-practising fee not always appropriate. I manage to write one article a year for the pharmaceutical world to keep my hand in, so as I understand it, the non-practising fee is not an option. And, frankly, having paid my retention fees for 17 years I resent being pushed into doing locums just to pay them now.

Karen Hassell’s report (PJ, 23 October, p625) made fascinating reading. Women are leaving pharmacy, leaving the Register and not necessarily returning to full-time work after having children. If the Society wants to keep us in the workforce it needs to review urgently the support it gives to those of us who take time off to raise children. I read with concern Maurice Hickey’s account of the vote signalling the demise of the part-time fee (PJ, 30 October, p643) a decision which seems to have been made with little debate. In our house such apparent disregard for others would necessitate some time on the bottom step and an apology. I seem to remember a staircase at Lambeth …

Sarah J. Marshall
Aberdeen

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