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Welcome to the May 2012 homepage edition of i2P-Information to Pharmacists. Rollo Manning has been having some time out having staples removed from the site of his open heart surgery.He is now at home recuperating in Darwin, having arrived home last Friday, beating a cold and hasty retreat from Canberra.We all wish him a speedy recovery and hopefully, he will be fit enough to contribute by next month.
This month, Pharmedia discusses the toll that is taken when someone complains about you to an authority without good cause. Well, the good news is that you can now take action to protect yourself if such a complaint is made, and that may even include action for defamation. Read about a recent case involving two doctors, with Mark Coleman drawing on personal experience to illustrate.

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NAPSA and the PGA

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Neil Johnston articles by this author...

Neil Johnston is a pharmacist who trained as a management consultant. He was the first consultant to service the pharmacy profession and commenced practice as a full time consultant in 1972, specialising in community pharmacy management, pharmacy systems, preventive medicine and the marketing of professional services. He has owned, or part-owned a total of six pharmacies during his career, and for a decade spent time both as a clinical pharmacist and Chief Pharmacist in the public hospital system. He has been editor of i2P since 2000.

Recently, i2P was sent a media release from APESMA, the pharmacist trade union.
It was embargoed until Saturday December 10, which was a point at the beginning of the i2P update cycle.
The release contained a link to an email that is alleged to have emanated from NAPSA – the National Australian Pharmacy Students' Association.
Because it was politically sensitive to that organisation and because it also contained a number of normally private contact details for their members, i2P decided to withhold the information unless it became public knowledge through other media sources - and that has happened..
The email provided the basis for published claims that the PGA was engaged in a bullying process with NAPSA to force their disengagement with the newly-formed PCHR- the Pharmacist Coalition for Health Reform, and it is hard to avoid this view when an examination of the pressures exerted by the PGA are examined in broad daylight.

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The email was dated Sunday November 27 and began with an alert to members of the NAPSA executive team that a range of communications had occurred between it and the PGA Secretariat.
An urgent teleconference was convened as a result, and the email noted:
“During the teleconference, it was brought to our attention that at the recent Guild board meeting, it was a very close vote between maintaining or withdrawing the Guild’s support of NAPSA.
Over the past week, I have also received a number of voice-mails from Marion Whalan and Karen Killeen (our primary contacts at the Guild National Secretariat) requesting an 'urgent re-assessment of our Sponsorship Agreement'.”

Now it must be acknowledged that NAPSA structures its affairs as an apolitical organisation and would be very aware of how the professional services climate was traveling in community pharmacy environments – an environment that they would anticipate populating so as to practice their newly-acquired skills from their respective pharmacy schools.
It is very much in NAPSA's interests to be pursuing any efforts to enhance pharmacy professional opportunities through health reform.
So it came about that NAPSA joined as a member of the PCHR which is about health reform in pharmacy and nothing to do with the “grubby” side of politics which only occasionally has the light shone on it (this may be just one of those rare occasions).

So looking at the NAPSA-Guild Sponsorship Agreement to see where any potential breach of the sponsorship agreement may have occurred, the following clauses are pointed to:

“The Sponsored Organisation (NAPSA) will not do anything or become involved in any situation which, in the reasonable opinion of the sponsors (Guild), brings the sponsors and/or Initiative into public disrepute, contempt, scandal or ridicule, offends public opinion or reflects unfavourably upon the sponsors and/or the Initiative’s reputation and the Principal Sponsor will be the sole arbiter in this regard”

“A Party may terminate this Agreement by giving the defaulting Party written notice if the defaulting Party commits a substantial breach of any of its obligations under this Agreement and fails to remedy the breach, to the reasonable satisfaction of the non- offending Party, within fourteen days after receiving notice requiring it to do so”

So it would seem that joining the PCHR to further a legitimate professional interest is a situation liable to bring the PGA sponsors and/or Initiative “into public disrepute, contempt, scandal or ridicule, offends public opinion or reflects unfavourably upon the sponsors and/or the Initiative’s reputation and the Principal Sponsor will be the sole arbiter in this regard”

You may say that “contempt” comes into the situation – but it is not generated or intended from NAPSA quarters. The PGA are shown to be guilty of very unseemly behaviour.
The PGA is a senior pharmacy organisation mostly respected for its raw use of power i.e. it is fear-based respect-because it deals in retribution.
It is not a respect borne out of a leadership based on fairness, integrity and respectful collaboration with other pharmacist  organisations.
In earlier years it was.
I have frequently commented in the pages of i2P about the loss of “collegiality” in the pharmacy profession and this incident tells me that may now truly be a lost cause.
Note also that there is no independent arbitration available in the PGA sponsorship agreement.

Because NAPSA stood to lose valuable financial support through the PGA, they were forced to the view below (although they were very polite and respectful in their email).

“It is reasonable for the Guild to assume that through NAPSA’s involvement with PCHR, and the looming Senate enquiry into the 5CPA, that NAPSA are in breach of the aforementioned clauses. It would therefore be within the Guild’s rights to withdraw their support of NAPSA.”

Most fair-minded pharmacists would disagree with their statement for the public record, but they would also understand that a Senate enquiry into the 5CPA would be embarrassing for the PGA for no other reason that it is happening, and that PGA right to be the sole agent for the pharmacy profession is no longer accepted by the majority of pharmacists.

What did NAPSA stand to lose?

From the NAPSA email we have excerpted the following:

“….........this is what we risk to lose:

NAPSA-Guild relationship is destroyed. It took the previous exec almost the full 12 months to get them back on side

* APP 2011, 2010, 2013
TRADE EXHIBITION ,HALL STAND; TWO FULL APP REGISTRATIONS; SIX COMPLIMENTARY EXHIBITOR PASSES         $5350.00

* Pharmacy Women’s Congress 2011,2012,2013
FOUR FULL CONGRESS REGISTRATIONS      $1,580.00

* NSBP Competition
ACCOMMODATION FOR THREE NIGHTS AND AIRFARE TO ATTEND PWC EACH YEAR AS A NSBP COMPETITION JUDGE    $1,970.00

* NAPSA EXECUTIVE MEETINGS
USE OF THE GUILD’S TELECONFERENCING FACILITIES TO ASSIST NAPSA TO CONDUCT EXECUTIVE MEETINGS      $1,100.00

* NPSS Report
GUILD INSURANCE PREPARES A FINAL STATISTICAL REPORT ANALYSING RESULTS  FROM NPSS DATA   $3,000.00”

And all the above while being paid by the PGA (or value given in kind) was partly funded from monies provided as management commissions for managing government grants.
It comes to the paltry total of $13,000.00 – a miserable price to pay for a loss of independence and a corresponding loss of democratic rights.
The premonition of what was to follow is summed up in a final part of the email:

“If the decision to extricate NAPSA from PCHR occurs, then all parties involved will be notified directly, and not through a media release. The PSA has been notified as to our intentions because we have a sponsorship agreement with them. As we do not have any such agreements with APESMA or SHPA, they have not yet been contacted.”

As we are all now well aware, the NAPSA people withdrew their membership from the PCHR.
PGA retribution had been extracted.
NAPSA independence has been destroyed, and legal advice ought to be sought regarding PGA's behaviour as the agent of that destruction.
NAPSA represents pharmacy's future and with the type of political mentoring they have been subjected to, it gives them a rather rocky start.

This system of funding has to be changed.
The minuscule sums that NAPSA requires is less than petty cash for even an average community pharmacy.
Bring on the Senate enquiry.

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