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Pharmacy is in a right old mess

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Pharmacy is in a right old mess

An untidy pharmacy is a regulatory minefield, General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) chief executive Duncan Rudkin told a packed hall of pharmacy owners at a conference in London this September.

When a visiting inspector sees piles of boxes and staff criss-crossing over one another haphazardly, their antennae go up: on average, disorderly premises are far more likely to breach one or more of the GPhC’s standards. 

A muddled working environment suggests poor risk management practice and a lack of guidelines – but is also a sign of an overwhelmed team, said Rudkin. “It speaks to a team… that may be struggling,” he commented. “That’s where other standards start to slip.”

The response from pharmacists was mixed. While some took Rudkin’s remarks as simple common sense, others found he had ignored a much deeper crisis. Renowned Sheffield pharmacist Martin Wicker gave this acerbic response: “An ‘overwhelmed’ team points to insufficient remuneration leading to the inability to fund and train sufficient staff, as well as to a broken distribution system with hundreds of products being unavailable at Drug Tariff prices.”

Former Royal Pharmaceutical Society president Sandra Gidley said that she had been banging the drum on workforce issues for years – and it was “depressing” that the GPhC has “done sod all about it”. 

This capacity crisis has hung over the sector for years. As more pharmacies close and others pick up their script business – once coveted, now an unprofitable millstone – the strain is only getting worse. Some are having to hire bouncers to keep angry patients at bay as the staff struggle desperately to clear a swamped prescription bench. More and more are finding themselves mired in similarly stressful situations, even if the particulars differ from one pharmacy to the next.

We hear a lot about the financial impact of businesses going into the red, as well as the damage done to communities by the loss of their pharmacies – and rightly so. But sometimes we neglect the sheer toll it can all take on the mental health of pharmacy owners and their teams, who having gone into a helping profession are often left wondering where their helping hand is going to come from.

Our big interview this month is with Danielle Hunt, chief executive at Pharmacist Support. She says the charity is seeing record demand for its services, which include counselling sessions and financial aid to allow pharmacists to get back on their feet. “We think we’ve moved on from the pandemic, but for a lot of people the expectation to keep delivering more is something that’s just gone on and on,” she says. 

With the NHS flu service opening to all eligible cohorts this month, and winter just around the corner, the stress is likely to be dialled up even higher. As Hunt remind us: “Pharmacists should know that they are not alone if it all becomes too much to manage.” 

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