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· Professional regulation
· Code of Ethics (2)
· The profession (4)
· Community pharmacy (2)
· Multiples
· Accuracy checking
· CPPE (3)
· Medicines use review
· Emergency supplies (2)
· Controlled Drugs
· NHS
· Nutrition
· Fellowship
· The Council
· Retention fees
· Section 60 Order
Letters to the Editor
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The profession
Adequate learning time should be provided
From Mr N. P. S. Sewak, MRPharmS
I applaud the Broad spectrum article by Aamer Safdar and colleagues
on being a preregistration
tutor (PJ, 8 July, p47). Trainees need appropriate
support from their tutors but, equally, need to put in the necessary
work themselves. The same can be said for newly qualified pharmacists,
who need support and guidance to help them develop.
New diploma courses are being created which allow participants to acquire
skills and knowledge on the job. Although such ventures are to be welcomed
it is important that pharmacists get continual support from their managers.
Unlike preregistration trainees, newly qualified pharmacists do not necessarily
get tutor guidance and may benefit from doing so as they embark on their
career.
In the current financial climate there is a fine line between the demands
of meeting service needs and providing training and development. However,
for both preregistration trainees and newly qualified pharmacists to
develop into competent practitioners, careful consideration needs to
be given to providing adequate learning time for them to carry out their
roles competently.
Navin Sewak
London
Employees in a leaderless profession
From Mr G. Diamond, MRPharmS
Steven Axon’s Broad spectrum article, “How
much is a pharmacist worth?” (PJ, 1 July, p10), was thought-provoking for many community
pharmacists as it addressed several issues covering pharmacist status,
pay and professional development in contrast to nursing. Clearly, Mr
Axon cares about employee pharmacists and how the profession is developing.
I would like to make the following comments.
With regards to pay, my partner is a degree-qualified psychiatric nurse
and pay, on balance, in community pharmacy seems to be significantly
ahead of that of most nurses. Many nurses whom I have come across complain
about the pitiful recompense as specialist nurses in GP practices.
We are trailing behind nurses as prescribers, but the nursing profession
has a solid, collective, militant lobbyist voice through the Royal College
of Nursing. Pharmacy has a fragmented, middle-class, apologist, “more
tea vicar” lobbyist voice.
Ultimately, employee pharmacists need to act more collectively if they
wish to be heard as one voice in making progress in relation to government
policy and to employers. But the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s
Council is for the chattering class of the profession — posturing
rather than asserting a role for the profession. And the National Pharmacy
Association increasingly represents the interests of multiple chain pharmacy
rather than sole trader companies.
Personally, I will continue to be flexible to meet the needs of patients
first and foremost via continuing professional development and educational
courses, because this is all that can be expected of employee pharmacists
in a leaderless profession.
Gerry Diamond
Manchester
Pharmacy's decline from its zenith to its nadir
From Mr G. D. Kearney, MRPharmS
It was startling to read the Broad spectrum article, “More
like the Sweeney”, by Graham Southall-Edwards (PJ, 13 May, p564). Pharmacists
who qualified before the 1960s are fortunate, in a bizarre sense, to
have seen the decline of pharmacy from its zenith to its nadir.
While watching a frustrated preregistration student recently, memories
of the past flooded back. Pharmacists in the past were surrounded by
a plethora of solutions, tinctures and infusions. After four years, a
newly qualified pharmacist would exhibit a personal capability to compound
complex mixtures, emulsions and ointments. All is now gone, processed
medicines have replaced dispensing and a rather unfulfilling occupation
has evolved. However, having one’s own business satisfied a need
for accomplishment but that, too, is fading away.
Young pharmacists and technicians today know nothing but a mindless,
dehumanised grind in the service of an unapproachable “grey fog” that
knows nothing but profit, demands nothing else, nor cares. Pharmacy is
clearly a profession in distress. It is just a routine and highly regulated,
risky occupation. Leaders within the profession have an incomplete vision
of the future and justify its existence by blurring the boundaries of
adjacent professions. Pharmacy is likely to be rebuffed by professions
whose territories are being invaded. The medical fraternity will ultimately
resent the encroachment, and territorial, emotive forces will be evoked.
It might be presumptive to quote The Pharmaceutical Journal article (8
July, p38) — “GPs
urged to open pharmacies to make profit without extra work”. It might be a fascinating “call to arms”.
The media are attracted to inspirational ideas and then exploit them
to a point of no return. The Harold Shipman catastrophe is a prime example.
Driven by the media, others seek occupational opportunity by “stirring” the
chaos and the situation grows to be untenable and unmanageable. The consequence
is that we live in a realm of fear and we are all too stupid — and
fearful — to think for ourselves but clever enough to think for
others.
Everything we do is based on fear. In her book (‘Escape from the
grip’, Hodder & Stoughton, 1979), Judy Wurmbrand states: “… after that, I felt very insecure. I was shocked to realise I was
becoming the end-product of what communism strives to create: insecure
people always afraid of being accused of wrong doing.”
Glyn Kearney
Lightwater, Surrey
Who will help us?
From Mr W. J. Ambler, MRPharmS
Every time I pick up The Journal I read how, as pharmacists, we can
reduce the workload of GPs or some other health professional.
With all the services we now offer the public, continuing professional
development courses to attend, extra paperwork etc, who is going to reduce
the pharmacist’s workload?
W. J. Ambler
Leicester
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal