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Letters to the Editor
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Pharmacy workforce
Urgent debate needed
From Mr S. A. Wheatley, MRPharmS
The Department of Health’s recent consultation
paper, “Making
the best use of the pharmacy workforce” is a cleverly crafted document.
It is full of many fine words to present a seemingly attractive vision
of the way in which community pharmacists in England could be deployed
in the future. But the paper flatters to deceive.
The twin elements of personal control and supervision are our whole raisons
d’ être — they are what we do! Any relaxation of these
two functions could be the top of a slippery slope down to our redundancy.
If pharmacists providing services in the community are no longer required
by law to exercise these functions, it does not require too much imagination
to predict that, sometime in the near future, a conclusion will be made
that we are surplus to requirements. This could be a defining moment
for community pharmacists and so we must be careful not to preside over
our own demise. The future livelihoods of many of our pharmacist colleagues
might be placed in jeopardy.
The intention of the proposals seems to be to make pharmacists less essential
to the supply function and use them to provide the so-called extended
services. However, I do not believe that the overall demand for such
services will be sufficient to provide full employment for all the pharmacists
so displaced. Enhanced services are to be funded by primary care organisations
and, as such, will be low on their list of priorities.
It does seem strange that, at a time when pharmacists and the profession
are being subject to more regulation, the proposals in the paper seek
to deregulate what we do.
The paper also refers to the number of new schools of pharmacy coming
on stream. In the medium term this will result in more pharmacy graduates
appearing on the employment market at just the time when the statutory
need for pharmacists is reduced. Supply could exceed demand and a diminution
in career prospects, and thus the ability to enjoy a reasonably well
paid livelihood, will ensue.
The concluding chapter 4 of the paper invites us to provide answers to
a number of questions. If we address those questions we will appear to
agree that, in principle, the proposals are possible and that we acquiesce
to them. To put it bluntly, I believe that we should distance ourselves
from the concept and that we should not assist by suggesting ways in
which it could be applied.
There is the need for an urgent national debate of this hugely important
issue as time is of the essence with the deadline for responses to the
DoH by 11 March 2005.
Stan Wheatley
Blandford Forum, Dorset
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