The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7500 p536
3 May 2008

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• Trimethoprim (2)
• Personalised service
• Shambolic procedures
• White Paper
• Workload
• Patents and generics
• Learning@lunch
• Minority languages
• Domain names
• Public relations (2)
• New professional body (2)
• The Society

Letters to the Editor

Workload

We need more support staff

From Miss R. J. Ellis, MRPharmS

The recent correspondence about pharmacy workload has focused on the high workload experienced in community pharmacy, but this is not the only place where too few people are trying to do too much in too little time. The dispensary of a large teaching hospital is a busy place, and the on-call service also has a high demand placed on it.

Hospital pharmacy has three main areas of expenditure: staff, drugs and gases. Unfortunately, when money is tight, the staff are the first to go (or not be replaced) and it is the patients who suffer. I have yet to hear of a dispensing error that has been dealt with beyond department procedures, but it is only a matter of time.

When the Royal Pharmaceutical Society takes some positive action on the matter of workload, will it remember to include hospital pharmacies? It would be helpful to have the Society’s weight behind calls for more support staff in all sectors.

Rebecca Ellis
Sheffield, South Yorkshire

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