Lack of Staff

[SolomonQ]

You pussy, why take it out on a cat? {JOKE!!!}

[Jeff]

You pussy, why take it out on a cat? {JOKE!!!}

I once tripped over mine when coming down the stairs - promptly renamed it Cooking Fat.

Jeff

[Sir_Dispensalot]

I once tripped over mine when coming down the stairs - promptly renamed it Cooking Fat.

Jeff

hehe mine frequently gets called cooking fat!
Normal name of cat is Titch (sorry to the forumite Titch - just coincidence! honest!)
steals my seat after i get up to get a drink = cooking fat
sticks head in pan of food being cooked = cooking fat
robs off with my tea once i plate it up = cooking fat
presses button on kettle to warm itself against = cooking fat
climbs up the brand new curtains = cooking fat
sits on my head in bed at 5am = cooking fat
gets in bath when i'm in it = cooking fat
sits inside dryer and doesnt say anything until AFTER i load it and start it up = cooking fat

[Titch]

No offence taken re the name of the cat - I have my brothers to thank for my nickname!

Re minimum staffing levels:

The guidance in the DT needs a rethink as for 6500 items you need 94 hours minimum.
Well what about a 100 hour pharmacy - doing methadone/nursing homes they easily hit this volume so with 100 hours of pharmacist input they don't technically need any dispensing staff.

[mike harvey]

To :Regional Pharmacy Manager Eastern Copy to Royal Pharmaceutical Society and PDA
Locum Service 0830-1200 July 11th Boots Worthing

Dear Sir/Madam
I was engaged by your Locum Office to cover pharmacy services at your store in Montague Street Worthing- 0830-1800 hrs on Saturday 11th July.
By 1000hrs, the pharmacy was grossly understaffed. One pre-reg (Bashir) and myself (a new locum to this store) were trying to cope with ::-
-Addicts daily pick ups
-Owings and finding patients’s scripts
-Walk-in Prescriptions
-Minor ailments
-Morning after pills
-Generating labels
-Clinical checking of Rxs.
-Dispensing accurately
-Checking Care Home Rxs for delivery that day.

These services cannot be delivered with this staff level in a store of such large footfall.
The waiting time for walk-in Rxs. moved from 20 to 40 minutes and it soon became apparent that the stress of this was likely to produce serious medication errors.

I am sorry, but I am not prepared to cover pharmacy services under these circumstances.
I contacted the Store Manager at 1000hrs explaining the under-staffing and said if it could not be corrected ,I was intending to cease providing the service.. 20 minutes later ,he told me that he was organising a relief pharmacist to replace me from Littlehampton. .He asked me to wait until that locum arrived .Presumably ,this locum would be placed into the same hazardous situation. in Worthing.
At 1200 hours ,he had not arrived ,so I left for Littlehampton.

I regret having to tell you that your Company will be generating serious errors if you allow this situation to continue. It is , furthermore unfair to your pharmacists to ask them to operate under this type of stress at any time..

I worked at Worthing from 0830-1200 (3.5 hours) and enclose my invoice. I completed my shift at Littlehampton and I am sending that invoice to the Store Manager for payment. Please expedite my invoice-I would also be interested in your response to my comments on your staffing levels.
Yours

[johnep]

Welcome Mike, may you stir things up here as much as you have elswhere. difference is, we are not so uppity and much more friendly towards industry.

Only thing I would add to your letter after October 1st.

" As the responsible pharmacist I must tell you that I am placing this on record and will take up with the appropriate authorities as necessary."

Regret all that will happen is no more bookings. The multiples could not care less as the locum will be blamed for everything as was Mrs Lee.
johnep

[Pharmanaut]

Doesn't sound uppity to me.
This is the sort of thing that we must be mindful of from the moment RP starts.
If these things are not drawn to the attention of the operators of the pharmacy that we work in then it could be seen as tacit acceptance of that particular situation.
If we have to have RP rules, lets work to them!

[dizzyb23]

We have been short staffed on a number of occasions and even though this was reported to the area supervisors, nothing was done about it.
But during this time, a customer came in and did not have their ass kissed in the way they and our company normally expect, the customer complained and area supervisors came down on us like the proverbial ton of bricks!!!!!!

Understaffing is a pain but in a Pharmacy, it's dangerous.

[LLUK77]

There are two issues here in community pharmacy. The dominance of non-pharmacy managers, and the fact that 70% of management have no formal management qualifications. So in effect we are being 'managed' by people who are not qualified to do so. Yet these are the very people who make decisions on pharmacy staffing levels. In the end though, customers leave with one impression - the pharmacy staff are incompetent/ slow/ etc. The real fault lies higher up and these people should be promptly removed

[LLUK77]

Message for Mike,

Nice letter Mike - I have worked there before - a few years back - although (luckily for me), it wasn't as you have described. It does get busy in that store and It is refreshing to see a Locum stand up and formally complain to the body corporate. Did you send a copy to the superintendent? I would have asked the superintendent how he allows such scenarios to arise in his stores. Worse still is that the pre-reg is only new - probably only doing this work for a month. I would have also stressed that the manager had no understanding of patient safety as their reaction was to replace you as opposed to support you.

But good on you mate... why are so many Pharmacists scared to complain? - we are 40% of the workforce after all.