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Neil Johnston, Rollo Manning and Jon Aldous (Newsletter #36) raised a number of issues dear to my heart, namely the degree to which pharmacy is ignored in many health promotion programmes, the lack of promotion of the profession as opposed to retailing of medicines and the problem of pharmacy factions.

Neil proposed a Division of Pharmacy Practice, similar to the Divisions of General Practice, to address the issue of fragmented representation of the profession.
A great idea but one, I fear, that may be almost impossible to bring to fruition. Pharmacy organisations will defend their territories to the death (probably of our profession).
Remember the fiasco of the Australian Association of Consultant Pharmacists (AACP) where the Society of Hospital Pharmacists Australia (SHPA), which represents the one group of pharmacists who act as consultants every day, all day, was "frozen out".
The lack of a cohesive message from pharmacy is, I feel, the profession's greatest threat.
I wonder what other profession would permit its viability to be threatened as easily as has pharmacy?

Thirty years ago Pharmaceutical Benefit (PB) prescription items were dispensed with a 33.3% mark up, today we are looking at 10 percent sliding to 5 percent (depending on the cost of the item) and even this is under threat.

How on earth did we ever let this happen without taking to the streets in protest?

Rollo reports that Pharmacy Guild President, John Bronger, would like to see a unification of Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) - (what ever happened to SHPA?), to give us a stronger body.
Great, but I doubt that, even if the peak bodies combine, such an organisation can prevent the "bloke down the street" from doing his own thing.
This is why we appear so irrelevant to other health care professions, most of whom perceive pharmacists as "grubby little shop keepers" who will do almost anything to gain an extra buck and so are easy to push around.
Why do you think that the Health Insurance Commission (HIC) continually forces community pharmacy to act as its policeman in matters such as the soon to be disaster (for pharmacy's image at least) of Improved Monitoring of Entitlement?.
I bet most of you are looking forward to telling a pensioner patient that he/she will have to pay $180 for the Zocor 80mg script they have been getting for $3.50 previously simply because they are unable to show you a Medicare card!
Thank goodness May 1 is a Wednesday and not a Saturday.
(I only work in community pharmacy on Saturdays!)
Lack of a cohesive, unified body makes us a pushover for other professions that have seen that there is strength in numbers. If only pharmacy had a lobby group as powerful and effective as the Australian Medical Association (AMA) we wouldn't have these problems.
Jon Aldous bemoans the lack of a slogan to emphasise the professional aspect of pharmacy.
We don't need a slogan, what we really need is some way to get the general public to understand the many benefits that can be gained by greater use of pharmacy's expertise in health promotion programmes.
Let's get rid of the "five minute script" mentality and refuse to be rushed by patients (or should that be customers?) with unrealistic expectations that pharmacy itself has created.
I cannot get the shop staff and pharmacy interns/students to actually call it as it is when taking in a prescription when I work on Saturdays.
The whole culture now seems to be to tell the patient "five minutes" irrespective of the fact that there are five people ahead of them and that the script has ten items on it!
Patient counselling under these circumstances is a joke.
If this is the current climate in community pharmacies I agree with Jon about the lack of any perception by patients that pharmacy offers any professional services.
Remember, as far as most of our patients are concerned, all we have to do is just stick the label on a bottle of tablets!!
Is it any wonder that the profession is gradually working its way down the list of most trusted - sorry, I'm getting up on my soapbox again.

Possibly Divisions of Pharmaceutical Practice, in association with a well developed advertising campaign to highlight pharmacy's role in health care, would finally help us to lose the poor relation image we currently labour under.
Let us use such a concept to firstly define in which direction we want the profession to progress and secondly, how we can get the "Ten Tribes of Pharmacy" (see newsletter #36) to work together to achieve our desired result. Unfortunately, given past history, there is always going to be someone who thinks that he/she will gain an edge by breaking away from the majority and the whole cycle will start again.
Pharmacy has nearly always been the quiet achiever of health care but with some of the "friends" we have, who need enemies?

Ends

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