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Originally Posted by paul2008  I think the UK has lost out by cutting its ties with the English speaking pharmacy world.......
Why did Australia and New Zealand have reciprocity, I think (somebody correct me) that twenty odd years ago there was almost universal reciprocity agreements. I guess these two countries had the closest ties and with pharmacy practise moving in the same direction the reciprocity lasted the longest. |
I feel that the only reason for the UK cutting its long standing reciprocity agreement with OZ and NZ was pressure from the EU.
The two way reciprocity agreement did indeed work very well for both hemispheres. Language was not a barrier, courses were similair - many of my lecturers in NZ actually trained and qualified in the UK (and then saw the light and emmigrated)! Then the UK up and decided unilaterally to cut the agreement.
I am not sure about OZ but NZ still has a much more viable route for transfer from the UK training to working in NZ than vice versa.
And I totally agree that MONEY is the driving force behind the multiples employing EU pharmacists - their recruitment drives in the EU always snare cheap employees for themselves. And of course for many EU qualified people the income in the UK is far more than they could earn at home.
Many NZ and OZ pharmacists have practiced over here for 1 year or less before returning home, simply because of visa restrictions and the fact that we cant afford to travel to this area of the world without earning some money along the way.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years with the cost of living in the UK increasing substantially, the cost of return flights to the EU increasing and the decreasing strength of the £ against the Euro. Suddenly the UK will be looking less desireable to many current and potential EU pharmacists to work here.
..... But of course the demand will decrease with the introduction of 'the responsible pharmacist' so then the UK will be able to produce enough trained pharmacists to meet its own demand and all us foreigners will be thrown out despite our years of tax contributions.