The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7474 p438
20 October 2007

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Letters to the Editor

Supervision

Save our careers before it is too late

From Mr P. J. Francis, MRPharmS

I read with alarm the Broad spectrum article by Stephen Axon (PJ, 22 September, p324). The proposals put out by the Department of Health for remote supervision amount to the deprofessionalisation of pharmacy — in other words, no pharmacists and no profession. Once technicians are able to hand over prescription medicines unsupervised, pharmacists will no longer have a role that anyone wants to pay them to do.

Have the mass number of pharmacists out there given any thought to what they will do when the inevitable happens, when the multiples they work for make them redundant and then offer them the same job at technicians’ rates, or offer no job at all? Stephen Axon is right about this.

I hope I am mistaken about what I have read. I doubt it though. Without drastic intervention, pharmacy in Britain will fall to the level it is at in so many countries where it does not even pretend to be a profession, with wage rates and employment opportunities to match.

The question is do we, as pharmacists, have the fortitude to save our careers before it is too late?

Paul Francis
Brisbane, Australia

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