The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7379 p710
10 December 2005

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

PDF 20K, Acrobat Reader

There's a hole in my budget more
Attracting young people to pharmacy more

There's a hole in my budget

It is hard not to be cynical about the state of the NHS. Since 1997 the Government has been trumpeting its determination to improve health care, to make services more responsive to local needs and to put patients at the heart of the process. It has poured billions of pounds into NHS coffers in order to achieve this, demanded much more from staff — both in hospitals and in the community — and introduced new contracts and ways of working for pharmacists, doctors and nurses.

The NHS is now revealed to be massively in debt — despite the injections of these vast sums. The solution facing many hospital trusts is to cut back on elective surgery and increase waiting lists, and so undo the hard work that has been achieved by many health professionals in the past few years.

And it is hard to believe that, between them, mandarins and politicians at the Treasury and the Department of Health could not have anticipated all this, particularly after the introduction of the new GP contract and hospital doctors’ salary scheme in 2003.

So it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the reason little has been said before is because 2005 was the year of a general election. The Government knew that huge holes would be blown in the budgets by the introduction of the contracts. However, it needed to keep the medical profession, in particular, on side until the election result was secured. The next few years will probably see more belt-tightening in the NHS until the next election looms and, once again, the Government decides it needs to keep those influential groups on side.

Pharmacy does not have as loud a voice as medicine but its leaders and negotiators — whatever sector they represent — must demand that any further changes expected in the next couple of years by governments in all three home countries are properly funded.

Back to Top

Attracting young people to pharmacy

Jane Kennedy, the minister with responsibility for pharmacy in England, has welcomed the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's careers campaign (p727). She says that there is a need “to attract young people who are interested in both science and the application of their knowledge to improve outcomes for patients”. Her support is valuable. But the campaign would be made even more effective if her endorsement were to be shared by the schools minister, Jacqui Smith. After all, it is in secondary schools that young people who may be considering a career in pharmacy are to be found, and the earlier teenagers become aware of the opportunities, the better the future will be for the profession.

Back to Top