The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7390 p264
4 March 2006

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· Methadone mixture
· Brand prescribing
· Oxygen services
· BuTrans and the SMC
· The profession (4)
· The Society
· Reciprocity
· CPD

Letters to the Editor

The profession

Please just stop being a pharmacist

From Mr A. R. Grierson, MRPharmS

The letter from Amit Matalia (PJ, 25 February, p233) raised a number of points, all of which were awful to read. Is our registration with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society on an equal level with a Corgi registration? If anyone honestly believes that, please just stop being a pharmacist, since it is a sad point to hold your own professional body in so little regard.

Many pharmacists are a little put out that we are not held in as high regard by the public as was once the case but, if this is the viewpoint of one of our own, what can we expect? If the profession is held in poor regard now, how would it be seen if the Statutory Committee simply gave every wrongdoer a slapped wrist? “You’ve held up a bank at gunpoint, sir? Never mind. As long as you’re still competent to carry out your white-collar, unprofessional role, it’s fine.” We are still a profession, and that profession must be safeguarded against the actions of a few for the benefit of the whole. Hence the ruling of “bringing the profession into disrepute”.

All I can hope is that Mr Matalia wrote his letter purely to get a rise out of someone, so well done. If it was actually how his logic works, then I am shocked that he still bothers to call himself MRPharmS if it means so little.

Andrew Grierson
Accrington, Lancashire

Actions have consequences

From Mr A. B. Sutherland, MRPharmS

May I express my feelings of insult and annoyance at Amit Matalia’s letter (PJ, 25 February, p233). I think he would find that a plumber who lost his driving licence as a result of drink-driving would soon find himself out of work. Also, if one is so stupid as to drive a car while under the influence of drink, it makes people wonder what they are doing in control of a pharmacy. Actions have consequences and as professionals we must expect to take responsibility for them.

To his second issue (distinctly separate despite the context) about pharmacists’ standing, your standing in front of patients and other professionals is directly related to your own actions. I have worked hard to assert my professional position in my area of practice, among patients and carers, and my direct service users, and so I am as valid a health care professional as any of his examples. I wonder if Mr Matalia should now reflect on his own actions as a partial solution to his sense of being undervalued.

Adam Sutherland
Glasgow

Upwardly mobile?

From Mr C. G. Murray, MRPharmS

I trust Amit Matalia (PJ, 25 February, p233) will, in future, withhold his retention fee in order to retrain as a gas-fitter to enhance his upwardly mobile aspirations.

Clive Murray
Tipton, West Midlands

Think again!

From Mr G. Southall-Edwards, MRPharmS, Barrister

I read the letter from Amit Matalia (PJ, 25 February, p233) with some surprise. He writes, “so what if a pharmacist is convicted of speeding, drink driving, theft, violence or any other matter”, and several answers immediately come to my mind. These are that (i) they all potentially indicate a possible disregard for the law in a person who is charged with a duty of following it to the letter, (ii) drink driving may (and often does) reveal an underlying history of alcohol addiction or abuse and (iii) theft clearly indicates that the person in question may not be trustworthy.

Now Mr Matalia should perhaps ask himself how he would feel if he were a member of the public, relying on and trusting in the advice of a local pharmacist and he were suddenly to discover that this person regularly drove down the high street at night at 70 miles per hour with a skinful of alcohol, then that he went home later to beat up his wife, because he was high on the drugs he had stolen from his employer and taken to enhance the effects of the alcohol he had consumed earlier, the effects of which would persist well into the next day when he was again in charge of a pharmacy. I venture to suggest that Mr Matalia might think twice about using that pharmacist’s (or his employer’s) services in future.

Graham Southall-Edwards
Tyrol, Austria

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