pom emergency supplies

[Fleegle]

Here's what happened when Ireland tried it....

Pharmacy strike cost HSE €3.85m for contingency sites - The Irish Times - Sat, Dec 12, 2009

The ball's in your court...

Fleeg.

[naf123]

looks like the irish pharmacy strike failed miserably. Something somewhere went wrong.

Sorry - just read elsewhere that the reasons pharmacist stopped because they feared patients lives were at risk.

Its a no win situation for pharmacists.

[Fleegle]

looks like the irish pharmacy strike failed miserably. Something somewhere went wrong.

Sorry - just read elsewhere that the reasons pharmacist stopped because they feared patients lives were at risk.

Its a no win situation for pharmacists.

Indeed. Never forget that politicians are very often the guys you went to school with who never acually went to Uni, or ever held down a proper job. They are generally just a big mouth in an ill-fitting suit. Sadly, it has always been this way.

Fleeg.

[El-loco]

Even though I am a student of pharmacy, reading the PJ is enough to make me depressed every week! Every week it talks directly or indirectly how bleak the future of pharmacy is....starting with for example this week about how the PCT will restrict funding etc.

The question is - has it always been like this? (over the last 20 years)

Yes for about 20 years now the future of pharmacy has been looking more and more bleak.

How come a pharmacist never go on a strike and will pharmacists ever go on a nationwide strike in protest of decreased funding etc? Surely as a profession, we are powerful enough to do something drastic such as a strike? If GPs can get away getting a contract in excess of 120K a year, surely we can do something to get in excess of lets say 80K a year.

Pharmacists will never strike. Most of them are in no position to as they are not independent professionals but a mixture of spineless wage-slaves and money grabbing businessmen. Pharmacists rarely agree on anything and are never united on any issue. They have (up to now) had no-one to represent them and their interests and have continuously been crushed under the regulatory jack-boot of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. These are the main differences between pharmacists and members of the medical profession who, in almost every way, have got it right.

But things are slowly changing. The new national boards and the new Assembly of the RPSGB are very much aware that they have to make REVOLUTIONARY changes to the way the society operates and thinks if they are to survive at all. You will not read much about this yet and, in fact, under the existing governance of the society neither MOCs (currently in power) nor board members (soon to be in power when the GPhC begins its regulatory role) are allowed to speak freely to the membership. They are only allowed to repeat the official society position. This will change.

"Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy - Kansas is goin' bye-bye."

[hibernia]

Pharmacists will never strike. Most of them are in no position to as they are not independent professionals but a mixture of spineless wage-slaves and money grabbing businessmen. Pharmacists rarely agree on anything and are never united on any issue."

You have summed up exactly what went wrong in Ireland.
Now everybody, those who stood up and those who hid, is suffering equally.
At least those of us who tried to do something have the satisfaction of having done something, even if we failed for a few short days we made our point, but it wasn't one that was worth a patient's life.

There was no satisfaction in watching patients suffer because of the inability of the state, even after throwing vast sums of money at the problem, to provide even the most basic pharmacy service. They couldn't do what we do every day, without fuss, and get the medicines to the patients.

To get back to the original point of the thread, it never ceases to amaze me that a doctor can be "too busy" to scrawl a signiture on a script but a pharmacist who takes more than a few seconds to fill it is a lazy slacker.

[Fleegle]

Excellent posts by El-loco and Hibernia. May I suggest any member or guest who have read the above takes note, and proceeds accordingly. Re GP script signing, we all know damn well they would sign off a tin of beans if their tee-off time was approaching.

Fleeg.

[bobbin]

Excellent posts by El-loco and Hibernia. May I suggest any member or guest who have read the above takes note, and proceeds accordingly. Re GP script signing, we all know damn well they would sign off a tin of beans if their tee-off time was approaching.

Fleeg.

Recently, we've had quite a few scripts where one GP has inexplicably signed over the top of another GPs signature!

[Fleegle]

There is a GP in the west of Ireland who uses a stamp with his signature on it. Shocking I know, as anyone could 'sign off' his scripts, but it has never been picked up. Peculiarly, however, the stamp is obviously much more difficult to forge..

Fleeg.