Is clinical pharmacy bad thing?

[Tony Schofield]

So what the rest of us do is irrelevant because mega chains want to dumb down pharmacy?

The new commissioning agenda will provide opportunity for those who want to use their clinical skills. You don't need to have a pharmacy business to be able to bid but it would obviously help. The multiples will not be able to compete. I have been saying this since the Pharmacy white paper but still people here look to what the multiples do as being the gold standard of community pharmacy.

I believe the future will be in collaboration with other health professionals, each playing to their strengths but operating contracts of around 3-5 years. They will be re-commissioned if they discharge their contracts and meet the key performance indicators and de-commissioned if they don't. Pharmacists, have massive roles to play in the new agenda if they only knew it.

Please stop looking at what the multiples do. They follow, they don't lead. They look for the bite sized chunks that can be made into a SOP and they stifle innovation. Very soon entries for the Pharmaceutical Care award will be invited and you will read about what innovation is taking place around June. You can choose to get involved or you can work for a multiple doing dreadful, low value, diabetes tests that infuriate GPs who get bombarded by patients who aren't diabetic but who have had a poor quality diagnosis made in a pharmacy. It brings us all into disrepute and you are correct to raise the point.

However clinical services of real value have been commissioned and are being performed in some pharmacies as we speak.

[jzd4rma]

Tony I don't think what the independents do is irrelevant remember I want to become one, but the multiples certainly have twisted the concept of clinical pharmacy to their own perverse interpretation I would gladly welcome the day when this arrives of services being commissioned to individual pharmacist. As you said each should play to their strengths and a pharmacist is not qualified for diagnosis of medical condition but they can certainly recommend appropriate medication for a patient and do a better job than a doctor because we have been trained to think about bio-equivalence, pharmacokinetics, interaction and the effects of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion for four years (at least I have).

P.s. I left a message on your wall a couple of weeks ago Tony but had no reply any chance you can get back on that for me thanks.

[sparkybw]

No patient has ever been diagnosed as diabetic by a pharmacist. Pharmacists do not diagnose.

What is happening is that patients who have raised blood sugar levels are referred to their GP for further investigations to establish whether or not they are diabetic or whether it was an isolated high level. That is the whole point of doing those tests to find out those who may be becoming diabetic and to help them to make the lifestyle changes necessary to prevent the full onset of diabetes.

Any doctor should be pleased to get this 'heads up' about his patients who are at risk. It costs less to tell someone they are at risk of developing diabetes if they don't make lifestyle changes than it does to treat a full blown diabetic with the extra checks that then become necessary such as foot checks and retina screening as well as the medication that they may then require.

[Tony Schofield]

I think I'm wasting my time here.

[Tony Schofield]

P.s. I left a message on your wall a couple of weeks ago Tony but had no reply any chance you can get back on that for me thanks.

I did reply. It's on my "wall" which I confess I seldom look at!

[jzd4rma]

I did reply. It's on my "wall" which I confess I seldom look at!

Thank you

[Ap0thecary]

Interesting thread!

[Hello]

Yeah the blood pressure stuff is usually carried out by the techs, they have a slight understanding of what the results mean but most of tham don't have the confidence to make a decision on the results. This is what the pharmacists do, come up with a plan to manage the data that is laid in front of them.

[Deadpan]

As for being funded for these services, it gets patient's into the pharmacy and gives you an opportunity to flog them anti-histamines/deoderant etc...