Aspirations to have 24/7 access to health services has begun to hit pharmacy, says Noel Wicks

I don’t know if you have noticed, but over the past few months there has been a significant increase in the number of hospital pharmacy departments looking at moving their pharmacy service to a full seven days a week.

This is quite different from the evening and weekend on-call service that I remember as a pre-reg and newly qualified pharmacist. In those days, my soon-to-be wife was a hospital pharmacist, and many was the time that I accompanied her in the wee hours of the morning to the pharmacy department because the faulty alarm system had gone off again. It often occurred to me during these bleary-eyed visits how strange it was that a department so central to patient care could be so under-utilised and unrecognised.

I once worked at a hospital that had a pharmacy department located at the rear, right next to the (now defunct) clinical incinerator. Why put it there? It was simply that they had forgotten to include a pharmacy department when the plans were drawn up. When they realised, it was too late, so they stuck it on at the back. The longer serving pharmacists used to regale us with gruesome stories of having to walk past trolleys with bodies on if the incinerator got backed up.

Now it seems we’ve come full circle and the immense pressure on hospitals to get patients out of the front door and home means that hospital pharmacy is under the microscope to ensure it doesn’t cause a blockage. It isn’t just about supporting early discharge through dispensing either: it also covers clinical services such as prescribing advice for junior doctors and medicines review on admission.

As you can imagine, this has created a huge challenge for the hospitals that have moved to a seven-day service, not least because of the workforce implications. In most cases I am led to believe that extra resource has been made available in order to increase the workforce, presumably because on balance it’s a costeffective way to meet the targets. I suppose that with the current output of pharmacy graduates it’s no bad thing that extra positions are being made available as a result of these changes.

"In quite a few other countries in Europe there are much more formal seven-day working arrangements for community pharmacy"

It does make you wonder whether or not similar changes could also come about in the future for community pharmacy. In quite a few other countries in Europe there are much more formal seven-day working arrangements for community pharmacy. That said, some of these may not continue, as relentless cost-cutting has forced businesses to re-evaluate the viability of such services.

Of course, with the 100-hour pharmacy openings over recent years, some parts of the UK have already benefited from greater access. However, I suspect that this access isn’t always where it would be most beneficial, nor does it have all the tools needed for it to be put to best use. But I imagine that, given a range of contractual national services that support costeffective patient care whatever the time, then community pharmacy could add tremendous value to both patients and the NHS. Until that happens though, I’ll happily continue to rest on the seventh day!

Noel Wicks is an independent pharmacist