Home

Article Archive
2000  2001

Editor:
Neil Johnston

Columnists:
Rollo Manning
Leigh Kibby
Jon Aldous
Roy Stevenson
Brett Clark
Ken Stafford
Pat Gallagher
Heather Pym
Simon Rudderham
Mark Coleman
James Ellerson
Terry Irvine
Roundup
Peter Sayers
Stephen Rogers
HCW

[Home] [About The Newsletter] [Topics Covered] [Testimonials]

ROLLO MANNING

* Place cursor on photograph for author details. * Click on photograph to view list of previous articles by this author.

PHARMACY STRUCTURE
Time to Review the Job of a Pharmacist (Take Two)

The year 2001 was marked by a sense of security from the Third Agreement. There has been a reluctance to question the powers that be as the money slowly rolled out in research grants. As pharmacy awaits the outcome it MUST look ahead at what is around the corner on the technology front. A repetitive few words, but make 2002 the year to "wake up" and think. Stop being robotic to an antiquated system and move ahead.

The year 2001 commenced questioning the way pharmacists spend their time in community practice.
It is showing every sign of concluding in the same way with very little having been achieved.
Is that anything new for pharmacy?
Well probably not considering the fetish the peak organisations for the profession have for maintaining the "status quo".
The argument given is that the Australian pharmacy system is serving the consumer well and is ranked as the best in the world.
So don't change something that is working well.
That may be so, so let's try and believe that it could be even better.
In the start of the year this Newsletter questioned the way time was spent.
The degree to which technology will overpower the dispensing process and the need for a review of the way community pharmacy is practiced.
The Auspharmlist is being pounded with postings on the subject of "120 prescriptions a day" as being the ultimate satisfaction for a pharmacist.
Machine-like or robotic?
Maybe.
Professional input to health care?
Hardly.
The ultimate in personal satisfaction?
Well certainly not.
When are pharmacists going to wake up to the fact that their dispensing days are numbered.
Technology is advancing at an exponential rate of improvement.
Legislation concerning privacy is the only factor holding back an avalanche of systems that will allow the electronic transmission of prescription data.
Once information is transmitted electronically, it can be used electronically for other purposes.
The prescription can load into the database and produce a label for the client, which can then be scanned for accuracy of label, person and pack and dispensed.
Presto!
A new era has evolved.
Can we still sit back in comfort and say that professional input is needed to "interpret" the prescription?
Forget about 120 scripts dispensed in a day, it will be 1000.
And with little to know pharmacist input.
Then what?
What will the pharmacist do with the time it took to dispense those 120 scripts a day.
The practice now occurring in the pharmacies "dispensing" at the rate of more than 120 a day is indeed "robotic".
At least in the mind of the operator.
How much real thinking has to be done to enter information into a database that is streamlined with abbreviations to allow few keystrokes?
If this article contains 507 words it would be the equivalent of 100 repeat prescriptions dispensed using the "fast repeat" option.
Is much thinking needed for that, and should there be any errors?
No- of course not as a pharmacist entered the data of the original.
Yet the remuneration is no less for a repeat PBS item as an original!
Really - it cannot last.
Let the year 2002 be the year of "waking up" and realising the job of the pharmacists' needs a remake.
Make that a New Year Resolution for 2002.
Then we might get some sensible and practical debate going instead of the nit picking pettiness that currently occupies the pages of Internet postings and other pharmacy trade publications through the letters columns.

And a happy and prosperous New Year to you too! Rollo Manning

Ends
Back to Article Index
Newsletter Reader's Forum