In light of the mention of pharmacists and their being able to prescribe meds directly I thought this, from today’s
i might be interesting:
I run a pharmacy and we’re struggling to cope – understaffing, underfunding, and more to do
This week the NHS rolls out more responsibilities to pharmacies for administering medication, but for some it compounds existing issues
February 3, 2024 6:00 am (Updated February 3, 2024 6:01 am)
This week NHS England launched
Pharmacy First, expanding the services that pharmacists offer to patients. Patients will now be able to receive treatment for seven treatments without needing to see a GP – sinusitis, sore throat, earache, infected insect bite, impetigo, shingles and uncomplicated UTIs. Over 10,000 community pharmacies have signed up to deliver the service. But there are concerns from those inside the profession around ability to deliver while still managing understaffing, underfunding, medicine shortages and increased pressure.
i spoke to Anil Sharma, an independent community pharmacy owner and
Community Pharmacy England’s Regional Representative for East of England, to hear his perspective on the rollout.
I’m a pharmacist and I own eightpharmacies, including a small community village pharmacy outside of Cambridge where I spend my days. For the past couple of months I’ve been preparing for Pharmacy First, where patients can get antibiotics from a pharmacist for seven conditions.
For patients, GPs, the NHS, it’s a brilliant idea – it gives patients what they need, takes the
burden off GPs and saves the NHS time and hospital resources. It helps people understand that pharmacies are not just people counting pills – we have a whole range of experience, expertise and skills that have been underused for decades.
More than 10,000 NHS pharmacies – a
96 per cent sign up rate – have registered to Pharmacy First and they will try to deliver it to the best of their ability. We’ve done the training and we’re ready for launch, and we’re expecting a huge influx of patients, especially at pharmacies in the cities where it’s far harder to see a GP.
But I don’t have the time, money or resources, to do more than two to three hours of Pharmacy First appointments each day.
Why? Funding, as ever. NHS England has funded us an additional £15 per consultation – you wouldn’t get a GP doing a consultation for that [every GP session is between 12-18 patients and GPs are paid between £9,000 and £12,500 a session]. It barely covers our costs. I could do a private weight management service or travel vaccination service and make £150 in the same time.
If the Government and the NHS had funded us correctly, we would have put private services on the backburner and opened Pharmacy First six hours a day. Funding and workforce have been a big problem since 2016, when our funding for dispensing decreased, where it’s remained since – in real terms that’s a decrease of 30 per cent. That’s just not sustainable and that’s why pharmacies are closing.
We want to help the NHS, we want to try and stop people going to hospitals because they can’t see their GPs. But we have to make tough choices.
It doesn’t help that we’ve lost a lot of our quality workforce to GPs because the pay is better, and so the only people who apply for our vacancies now are people who’ve never worked in a pharmacy before.
I had someone apply for a job recently who currently works in a garden centre. I told her the pharmacy job only pays minimum wage and she said that’s what she gets at the garden centre, but there I only sell plants, I can’t harm anyone. But in the pharmacy if I give them the wrong drug they might end up in hospital.
She said she didn’t want to take that risk without getting paid more, but I couldn’t afford to. I told her that if I was her I’d stay at the garden centre.
That’s the harsh reality. The Government fails to realise that we’re not just competing with other NHS providers who are getting better funding, we’re competing with our local garden centres. A lot of the skilled workers have left, and then you’re left hiring people who you have to train quickly with the help of full-time staff who are already under pressure because we’re short staffed. The only staff that can stand the stressful environment now are historic staff who are used to working in a pharmacy, used to the pressures, and they love caring for people.
If you’re not strong-willed, mentally strong, physically fit, you can’t survive this for long. You’ll burn out. You’ll have a nervous breakdown. And you’ll leave the profession.
I’ve been doing this for 25 years. We are embedded in the communities and we want to help them first and foremost. But if you’re not invested in the pharmacy like I am with my pharmacies, why would you stay?
