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Letters to the Editor
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Community pharmacy
Reply from
David Pruce, Director of Practice and Quality Improvement at the
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
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Why does this dangerous state of affairs exist?
From Mr J. M. Brunt, MRPharmS
Casually listening to a pharmacist employed by one of the newer multiples
made me glad to be retired and out of it. This man, on learning I had
been on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council during the 1980s,
told me he supervised some 17,000 prescriptions a month and wondered,
quite rightly, what the Society was doing in allowing this dangerous
state of affairs to exist and how he had come to be in such a situation
with a perfectly good university degree.
In my view, nobody can supervise
that number with any semblance of safety and this man could be forgiven
for thinking his professional society had abandoned him.
There was a time when no company would dare to exploit labour in this
manner. That was something the inspectorate would sort routinely but,
alas, it seems, no longer. Mike Brunt
Thetford, Norfolk
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DAVID PRUCE, Director of Practice and Quality Improvement at the
Royal Pharmaceutical Society, responds:
Mr Brunt raises some fundamental
concerns
about pharmacists’ workload. Like Mr Brunt we would be concerned
if pharmacists were being placed under pressure to work under dangerous
conditions or dangerous levels of work. No one should be placed in a
position where they have an unreasonably high workload. It is dangerous
for patients and unreasonable for the professional involved.
We deal with this specifically under the code of ethics and the professional
standards and guidance documents that support it. These standards address the
issue of people in authority and state that they must ensure that “working
conditions and practices are lawful and resources, facilities and equipment enable
staff to provide services to professionally accepted standards”. They also
require that staff are able to raise concerns about risks to patients or the
public.
We would like to remind employers that they must comply with the code of ethics
requirements and that expecting pharmacists or pharmacy technicians to work
under potentially dangerous conditions or workloads could form a breach of
the code.
The code also says that pharmacists and pharmacy technicians must “ensure
that you are able to comply with your legal and professional obligations and
that your workload or working conditions do not compromise patient care or public
safety”. It goes on to say that one must “raise concerns if policies,
systems, working conditions, or the actions, professional performance or health
of others may compromise patient care or public safety”. This sets out
pharmacists’ personal responsibility for ensuring that they do not allow
themselves to work under conditions that put patients at risk.
The inspectors address problems that are raised with them. However, pharmacists
do need to raise concerns both with their employer and with the Society if
they think that patients are being put at risk because of workload. We appreciate
that it is not easy to raise a concern in this way and it takes courage to
do
so.
However, we would urge pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to raise
concerns rather than simply accepting the situation or leaving a post
because of excessive
workload. We do take these matters seriously, in the interests of maintaining
professional standards and ensuring high quality pharmacy services. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal