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Letters to the Editor
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Health and safety
Improve pharmacists’ working conditions
From Mrs L. K. Gilpin, MRPharmS
We have all had days when everything goes wrong — the train is
crowded, the coffee is spilled, the prescriptions come in bunches rather
than a steady stream, the urgent medicine fails to arrive even though
it has been promised and someone is off sick. That is life. We cope.
A
certain amount of stress is good for us. It keeps us on our toes, we
know we are alive and, at the end of the day, the relaxation is all the
sweeter because of it.
But unrelenting stress is different. The kind
that wears us down day after day is all too frequent now for pharmacists,
who have little control over their working conditions.
In a recent Chemist & Druggist survey, 80 per cent of community
locum pharmacists and 76 per cent of community employee pharmacists expected
their stress levels
to be higher in 12 months time — and this from a pretty high baseline
already.
Companies with non-pharmacist area managers seem to be among the worst offenders,
insisting that a certain number of medicines use reviews be performed whether
appropriate or not and “If you don’t get that number done today,
then just get double done tomorrow”.
With the move away from dispensing to other services, the locum or employee
is having to do everything they have previously done and everything else on
top, often with inadequate and poorly trained staff. These poor conditions
of work cannot continue to go unchallenged. They can lead to errors that ruin
lives.
I want the new professional body to concern itself with the working conditions
and the health and safety of pharmacists. I want it to be proactive and not
just wait for a whistleblower to sacrifice his or her own future for the sake
of others.
I want there to be, if necessary, a way of reporting anonymously — even
through a third party to alert the professional body to where it should shine
a light to expose unsafe working practices and put an end to them.
Now that would be a professional body worth joining. Lindsey Gilpin
New Malden, Surrey
English Pharmacy Board Election Candidate
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal