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Self-confessed audiophile Outsider tunes in to the proceedings at this year’s Sigma conference to find out what’s eating pharmacy owners
I love audio. I like noise in my ears. I remember as a small child climbing into the loft and not only being surrounded by all this great, weird stuff (or inheritance, as I now call it) but also hearing my own internal monologue for the first time.
There I sat on a banana box, or fruit crate of some kind, filled with random Long Play and 72 records, a slide projector and a boomerang... along with my internal monologue.
It was strange, and I didn’t like it, so started to listen to a portable wireless I found in the same loft to tune out said monologue, and I fell in love, hiding under the covers listening to Radio Tirana or whatever strange continental station was bouncing off the ionosphere.
No, this has not turned into a random self-help column, but merely a way of admitting that I am an audiophile and I will listen to anything.
It’s mostly just background noise, even the news, to such an extent that it washes over you. You start listening and it’s interesting but over time it just becomes a comfort blanket.
One economic boom into another market collapse. Political ascendancy into rotting vegetables.
Then, out of nowhere you will hear something so incongruous, something so out place and jarring that you have to turn it off and do something else.
The new government’s recently increased National Insurance (NI)contributions for employers came into force at the beginning of April and if you read the reports, any random percentage of employers are about to make redundancies due to this new cost burden. Not unreasonable, in a constrained market to manage costs carefully.
The NI rise is not an insignificant extra burden for businesses of all size, as discussed in these pages previously. Pharmacy is no exception to any other business.
Across the pharmacy press, we’ve all seen the reporting: the extra burden of the employer NI contribution when combined with increases in the Minimum Wage will prevent pharmacies from recruiting additional staff.
The same message was also being broadcast from the Mariott Boulevard Hotel in central Baku, Azerbaijan. Yes, another year of pharmacy going bust, another year of luxurious conferences held by buying groups in random, tropical and sub-tropical climes.
And there it was the sudden poke from one side of my brain to wake up my incessantly consuming audiophile side. Aren’t we in an economic pinch? Especially in pharmacy?
That said, conferences can be really beneficial. Community pharmacy is a lonely profession – there aren’t many pharmacies that demand a team of pharmacists, so whilst you are always working with your pharmacy team, you can often feel professionally isolated.
The same applies to pharmacy owners. Getting to spend time with peers, discussing and learning with them – and from them. Conference programmes can, of course, vary in quality. I’ve been to many a conference that was only redeemed by the food and a couple that were almost ruined by the same.
As far as community pharmacy conferences go, this particular gathering had an interesting programme with a variety of speakers and panel sessions. All of the sessions were live-streamed and well reported by the trade press, including this particular organ.
Any ex-Boots pre-reg of a certain age will remember Trevor from their pre-reg conference (certainly not held in tropical climes) and I could watch a Trevor Gore conference session any day.
There was a good showing from Community Pharmacy England as well. The pharmacy services session with Alastair Buxton was engaging.
He challenged the sector about its performance – rightly so – and it was interesting to see members of the committee talk openly (though not openly enough for some) about the processes underpinning its votes during contract negotiations.
I would quite like to have gone, if i’m honest, even if I think my reservations about holding it in Baku would have won out ultimately. At any rate, it made for decent midweek listening.
Outsider is a community pharmacy commentator
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