The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7335 p145
5 February 2005

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· Nutrition
· Dispensary assistants
· Employment
· Problem-based learning
· Community pharmacy
· Morphine sulphate
· The profession
· The Society (3)
· CPD (2)
· Pharmacy practice
· We've had enough of…

Letters to the Editor

Dispensary assistants

Different abilities

From Mr P. Walton, MRPharmS

The company I work for decided that it would satisfy the minimum competency requirements for dispensary assistants by purchasing the National Pharmaceutical Association dispensary assistants course for all staff. We assumed that the course, which is NVQ level 2 equivalent, would be a simpler task to undertake than the dispenser course which is equivalent to level 3 NVQ (which is of A-level standard). The assistant course was, in fact, the first three modules of the dispenser course. I find it hard to believe that most people who work in dispensaries are of an academic ability that would allow them to understand work written to A-level standard. On telephoning the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and pointing out that we have staff doing repetitive work such as filling monitored dosage system cards, I was told that the staff need only complete relevant modules. However, the NPA modules are not split into sections that are easy to divide by task. The NPA states that only completing part of the course will mean that assistants will not get a certificate to show they are competent in a dispensary.

To have the NVQ2 equivalent workbooks be of the same standard as the NVQ3 books is ridiculous. It is a bit like assuming that a school student in GCSE physics could understand a short textbook on advanced general relativity.

Either the Society or the NPA (depending on who is responsible for this situation) needs to understand that the myriad of tasks in a busy pharmacy are often broken down into small sub-tasks just so that the staff who perform them need not be of high academic ability and so recruitment of suitable staff is easily possible. I wonder why the person I employ to fill MDS cards needs to know what hosiery is available on FP10? Perhaps the person who can answer that is over-qualified?

Philip Walton
Swinton, Manchester

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