Quote:
|
For the benefit of the audience, Tony- Who are you addressing this to?
|
abviously not to me (i hope), but just to elaborate my position above and comment regarding my experience, ok maybe ive not had as much experience as people who have been pharmacists for 10-20 years but I can still comment on those people saying hospital pharmacy is becoming redundant sector for pharmacists, well these people will have been living in a cave somewhere far away from UK then, here is a easy observed sector to see where pharmacy is moving towards and what changes are being made, pharmacists can be seen working alongside doctors and nurses aswell as others in multi-dicipline teams sometimes even pharmacist led clinics etc... but some people would still rather do menial work like counting pills and filling shelves.
also according to the same logic being applied to hospital pharmacy by some, are the same people predicting similar fate for community pharmacy especially with the "responsible pharmacist" becoming more of a reality each day and also with ACTs etc.... atleast they dont appear to be doing that at the moment. Before making points like this please consider things such independent prescribing rights for pharmacists plus the re-orientation of community pharmacy towards clinical issues.
and like I said pharmacy technicians are to pharmacists what nurses are to doctors. there must be alot of nurses out there who can manage some conditions aswell as a doctor can and so there are many situations where nurses are solely responsible for he care of ceratin paqtients, and similarly pharmacy technicians might well become qualified enough to do clinical checks, but they wouldnt be pharmacists just like the above mentioned nurese are not doctors. and in such situations pharmacists would still be hired by hospitals but maybe to do more, shall i say, useful jobs.
Regarding low levels of clinical errors in cp, and my experience well it doesnt take more than 8 motnhs to see what kind of errors a pharmacy encounters, and fortunately as a pre-reg im not regarded as just another dispensary staff member as alot of pharmacies like to treat people at my level. and i do keep a look out for any potential issues in the rx im processing or any others (Normally pharmacist goin out to the shop front, then me askin him what was wrong with the Rx later) etc.. with Rx and when i talk about 1 error per day I mean CLINICAL error such as contraindicated medicine or an interaction etc... not things such as unsigned or undated prescriptions or uncomplete Rxs in other ways. however I do not include OTC interventions, the number would be far greater then.
There are basicly two type of Rx patients, those on repeat prescriptions and those on just the one off, short term say antibiotics. The long term patients on repeat medication hardly ever change therapy however those initiated on long term therapy do take time to stabalise, so very low chance of issues here.
The short term patients, well shouldnt really call them patients, should call them customers as they treat pharmacy like a shop and like to shop around, one time they go to one pharmacy with their antibiotics next time go to another for their ibuprofen, then go to a third for the omeprazole so how do you check for any clinical issues here? the best intervention i can think of for these sort of patients is if it's a dentist Rx asking them if they're allergic to peniciilin as the dentists dont have patient medical records.
I have the feeling someones gona get totally the wrong side of the stick about what ive written and make unneccesary comments but hey the best i can do is write a note :
PLEASE READ ALL OF THE ABOVE (TWICE FOR SOME, THRICE FOR A SMALL MINORITY OF OTHERS)!!! THANKS