Editorial

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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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The natives are getting restless

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	Ken Stafford articles by this author...
A Consultant Pharmacist Perspective

I have been following with some interest a series of postings on the web site ausphamlist.net.au about the 2010 salary scales for pharmacists proposed by Guild and Government. One, from a young pharmacist called John Kinsella here in Perth, caught my attention late last week. In this he argues quite vehemently that the proposed $26 per hour for a pharmacist with ten years experience is an insult, especially when compared to about $40 per hour for nurses working in the Health Direct program.

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As John writes, nurses have been able to convince government that they can:
Improve links between the public and health care service
provide easier access to health information and advice without increasing the pressures on other health services
provide more consistent medico-legally reliable health care advice
improve community health due to better access to health promotion, prevention and early intervention
reduce the effect of GP shortages, especially after hours, as patients will be able to get good health advice, particularly on minor ailments, at any time.
Etc, etc, etc
 
Does this sound familiar to anyone out there in community pharmacy land? As John states “Sounds like what I do all day for free, yet these types of nurses get at least $40 per hour”.
 
I know I sound a little like a stuck record but, once again, I ask why is it that the nursing profession can get its act together and attach a monetary value to services they have never provided before while the Pharmacy Guild seems to find it impossible to do this, despite it having been pharmacy’s role for years? John highlights the fact that the PGA has never been able to attach any monetary value to pharmacy’s primary health care benefits but nurses do not seem to have found this a problem.
 
When you consider the many roles that pharmacists carry out in the community it is easy to understand why John feels a rate of $26 per hour is bad, very, very bad for employee pharmacists.
 
Pharmacy is crying out for a change in how it is represented in negotiations with government, the current stranglehold by the Pharmacy Guild may be great for owners but you can argue it is not in the best interest of the profession in general. PGA does not represent the 18,000 or so pharmacists in Australia, it is an organisation that looks after about a third of this number – the owners. Low hourly rates for employee pharmacists may be advantageous for the proprietors but what kind of message does it send to government? After four years of study and a further intern year is a pharmacist’s time and expertise worth less than your average motor mechanic, and about a quarter of what you pay the washing machine repair man? Come off it – what other highly trained health professional is expected to take all the pressures under which the local community pharmacist works for what is in essence peanuts?
We are very much in need of a new way of providing pharmacy services to the community, one not hamstrung by the constraints negotiated by the Guild. Why should consultant pharmacists be forced to operate through the local pharmacy when doing home medication reviews? Accredited consultant pharmacists can be likened to specialist medical providers (physicians, surgeons etc) who operate independently, not being tied to any particular GP and this seems to work quite well. One of the positives of the first pharmacist home medication review program established by DVA in the early 2000s was that doctors were able to refer their patients to a consultant pharmacist, get direct feedback and discuss the HMR without reference to a third party (the local community pharmacy). This process is familiar to doctors, it’s how they operate with medical specialists and seems to work quite effectively. The only reason we have the current HMR process is that the Guild negotiated the program and set in place procedures ensuring the patient’s community pharmacist acted as a type of gatekeeper – great for the proprietor (usually a Guild member), not that great for independent consultant pharmacists.
I again raise the question – is the PGA the best body to negotiate with government and other funding agencies on behalf of the pharmacy profession in Australia? The Guild’s client group is the proprietors of pharmacies, not the many thousand employees, so it is likely to have a fairly narrow view of matters. $21 - $26 per hour is in the best interests of the owners but could be a disaster for the profession. To maintain the very high standards required of pharmacists in the community the profession must attract the best students. This is not going to happen if the hourly rate of pay is not much greater than that of the average “check-out chick/chap” at the local supermarket. Should the Guild and government decide that this is what they consider an experienced pharmacist after ten years in practice is worth I can definitely see the natives becoming very, very restless.
 

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