Give us a break – we’re dying for one
Are pharmacists destined to be like those workers of the industrial revolution, for whom the bosses couldn't see the industrial disease? It's time for a safe, professional working environment, argues Xrayser
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You know those days when the queries and the problems seem endless, patients have nothing but complaints, and you've not made your MUR target? Well, according to The Lancet last week,1 if you feel you're dying to get to the end of the day – that could be literally true. The report concludes that having a highly demanding job, but little control over it, could be a deadly combination of job strain increasing risk of cardiovascular disease by 3.4 per cent. "Highly demanding job but with little control over it" – doesn't that sound familiar? Doesn't that sound like having to stop some of the 40,000 serious medication errors a year while answering the phone, chasing stock on quota, and juggling impatient patients with the need to do an unnecessary MUR? We used to be able to take comfort from being reasonably well remunerated for our efforts. Like intellectual athletes, we'd push our bodies for high return – knowing we could retire in comfort before burn-out. But now even that is being threatened. Again owners despair over the latest category M famine – and employees see ever greater demands to meet MUR and other service targets, proving that "clinically necessary" is meaningless and MUR and NMS are just exercises in marketing not medicine. And now it seems this is extending to locum pharmacists, for whom some employers are reducing pay rates in the absence of an MUR. This could have implications for the self-determined status of a locum as self-employed, with such control by an employer possibly bringing the attention of HMRC. |
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 Will companies offer rates that lessen each time a locum reduces their value by indulging in pleasantries and conversation or consults the BNF? |
It also begs the question of where this will lead, perhaps with companies offering a scale of rates that lessen each time the locum reduces his or her value by indulging in pleasantries and conversation, wastes time looking at the BNF or other reference sources, or dares to take a toilet break.
Whither the GPhC code of ethics? Is there no part that applies to superintendents, requiring them to engender a safe, professional working environment? I suppose the old RPSGB workplace pressures campaign lame duck demonstrated how likely our leaders are to bring about improvement in working conditions.
So are we destined to be like those workers of the industrial revolution, for whom the bosses couldn't see the industrial disease? Will our cardiovascular disease be the 21st century equivalent of phossy jaw and mesothelioma, and will it take another century before the pressures in which we work will be addressed?
Before we start getting calls from the ambulance chasers let me say that I don't want to make a claim, I just want to practice my profession in a safe environment – and before an analysis of pharmacist obituaries disproves the saying: "Hard work never killed anyone."
Reference 1. Kivimäki, Professor M et al. Job strain as a risk factor for coronary heart disease: a collaborative meta-analysis of individual participant data. The Lancet 14 September 2012
