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Letters to the Editor
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Community pharmacy
Heavy workload is taking its toll
From Mr A. J. Jukes, MRPharmS
The last sentence of Catherine
Watson’s letter (PJ, 1 March 2008,
p244) hits the nail on the head: “We need our leaders to act.”
We are reminded as professionals that our primary role is for the well-being
of the patient. In recent years I have witnessed and heard of the increasingly
adverse conditions and ever increasing workloads that affect the quality of
care that pharmacists give patients.
The main themes related to workload seem to centre on low levels of support
staff and suitably trained support staff, lack of work breaks and increasing
demands that compromise the accuracy and quality of service provision, constituting
a risk to patients from both medication errors and the inability of pharmacists
to give a high quality, professional service.
I know the Pharmacists’ Defence Association has done quality work on
related issues, but unless someone enforces change through legislation with
teeth or “leaders” actually act on concerns of members then the
pharmacy profession will not be “sleeping walking into this state of
affairs”; it will be in a coma.
The only other way forward is for professionals to remove themselves from the
work premises. But, as Ms Watson rightly suggests, those with mortgages and
similar financial commitments cannot do this and it should be a task for the
leaders to address. As a locum in the south east of England, I and colleagues
in the area now have a list of workplaces that are not considered safe to work
in and cover will not be provided to these.
If no one enforces standards and effective methods to manage workload safely
and therefore give the public the service they should expect from professionals,
I can envisage the same scenario in future years. It is time certain quarters
looked up the words “leader” and “action” in the Oxford
English Dictionary and supported people at the coalface.
Andrew Jukes
Brighton
We need legal guidelines on workload
From Dr M-L. Truong, MRPharmS
Mike Brunt (PJ, 23 February 2008, p212) raised the issue of
unreasonable workload. Are there any guidelines about the workload a
pharmacist can
reasonably accept and how you would set about making a sound judgement
about this?
Perhaps we could adopt French practice, where the law requires a minimum number
of pharmacists working in a pharmacy, linked to its annual turnover. If we
were to adapt such a system, we could link it to the monthly number of items,
for example. Alternatively, we could have a guideline to say that a pharmacist
can do safely N1 items per day, while a pharmacist, plus a dispenser can do
safely N2 items per day, and so on.
Minh-Loc Truong
Coventry
Do supermarkets do it better?
From Mr N. Ali, MRPharmS
Lord Mancroft, a Tory peer, sparked a debate on the NHS in the media
last week. He made some less than flattering comments about nurses and
their lack of professionalism.
What failed to hit the headlines were his comments expressing dissatisfaction
with community pharmacy. He remarked how frustrated he becomes when it takes
a pharmacy 40 minutes to dispense his medicine when he can see it on the shelf
in front of him.
He contrasted pharmacy’s inefficiency with the efficiency of British
supermarkets. The sad reality is that most of the public equate the profession
of pharmacy with retailers selling tins of beans.
Community pharmacy has lost its soul: healing patients has been sidelined and
replaced by the drive for commercialism and profits.
Nadim Ali
Pharmacy Lecturer
Stow College, Glasgow |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal