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Letters to the Editor
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Funding
NHS shortfalls are leading to pharmacy cuts
From Dr J. Cooke, MRPharmS
The PJ (1 October, p402) states: “Pharmacy services are likely to
escape any spending cuts which NHS trusts may need to bring in to balance
their books before the end of the financial year.” However, what
is not widely known is that many hospital trusts have been told by their
strategic health authorities that the funding arrangements for preregistration
graduate and student places have not been uplifted for the “Agenda
for change”(AfC).
The result in the north west, for example, is that 68 preregistration places
in secondary care have been reduced to around 57, unless trusts find extra
funding.
Most acute trusts are currently in serious financial recovery and cannot
uplift any shortfall for the AfC. Trusts expect that trainee posts like
these are funded properly through the “Education and training” levies.
The reduction in numbers is a potential disaster for the NHS and for ensuring
appropriate patient care. The chief pharmacists have repeatedly argued
that the service needs more, not fewer, places for preregistration trainees
in order to address the crucial medicines management developments that
are being put into place in line with the “NHS plan”, “Improving
medication safety”, the antimicrobial pharmacist programme in “Winning
ways” and the development of pharmacist consultants and prescribers.
The schools of pharmacy in UK universities have substantially increased
their intake, partly as a response to these strategies.
There are still many hospitals that are finding it difficult to recruit
pharmacists at all and it is somewhat ironic that pharmacists are cited
as a special case for treatment with respect to recruitment and retention
premiums in the AfC.
A dependency culture based on agency staff is not cost effective and does
nothing to take these important developments
forward.
We demand that this be raised at ministerial level and to move to a proper
equitable and meaningful funding arrangement for preregistration training
in secondary care that reflects the future manpower needs for the profession.
Jonathan Cooke
Director of Research and Development
Chief Pharmacist
South Manchester University
Hospitals NHS Trust |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal