Sports Teams

I love sport and a peice by Simon Barnes on 2nd January really caught my eye. It talks about how exceptionally talented indiduals can lift a whole team to new levels.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/article5429834.ece

The same thing applies to teams in less high profile areas like pharmacies. If you have exceptional employees the whole team can be lifted to a higher level. I wish employers would realise this. It isn’t enough to employ a pharmacist you need to emply the right pharmacists to lift a team.

Happy 2009

Well the festive period is over but I guess things won’t get back to normal until Monday. So enjoy the next few days before work begins again in what will be, by all accounts a pretty difficult 2009. However as Sun Zhu said times of great hardship, opportunities arise and  “Opportunities multiply as they are seized”

So unlike recent years, you might have to look a little harder for the opportunities but if you do, things will be OK.

Shaun is a Director of PL-UK Recruitment Ltd – a respected provider of pharmacy jobs, both permanent and locum.

Can we learn something from GB Cycling at the Olympics?

I bet, like me you’ve watched in awe the GB cycling team at the Beijing Olympics. They are completely dominant in their event in a way that very few countries have achieved in any sport.

It occurred to me that as a profession, pharmacy can learn a thing or two from the GB cycling team. Like pharmacy in the healthcare “team” cycling has never been as high profile as the “sexier” sports of athletics and swimming (For athletics and swimming read medicine and nursing)

In this Olympics, these sexier sports have been put to shame by the laser beam focus of the cycling team. They have based themselves at a centre of excellence in Manchester, constantly pushing each other to bigger and better things to the point where they are way ahead of any other nation in the world.

Athletics and swimming (Becky Addlington apart) have, by comparison, failed to deliver and will have a lot to do to catch up for London 2012.

I think the Olympic analogy holds in healthcare terms. Medicine and nursing are much more high profile than pharmacy but with all the investment in GP surgeries, hospitals and extended roles for nurses, what difference do you see in the day to day care received by patients across the UK?  I would say that things have improved, but to no where near the extent they should have done because the medical and nursing professions have creamed off a huge proportion of the extra money in terms of increased salary and bonuses. Pharmacy on the other hand has had to live off scraps left by the other professions.

In my opinion pharmacists need to develop the laser beam focus seen in the cyclist.  The latest White Paper – “Pharmacy in England-Building on Strengths, Delivering the Future” gives pharmacists in England an opportunity to focus in on delivering a world class service that make a measurable difference to healthcare in England (and we know we are well behind Scotland in this)  In the same way as the cyclists have based themselves in Manchester, I think that pharmacists need to gather around a body that will deliver real differences for both the profession and GB patients and put the sexy professions to shame. This might be the “new” RPSGB focusing exclusively on representing the profession or the PDA Union. I don’t care which one it is and I have no romantic desire for the RPSGB to succeed after all what have I gained this year from my near £400 retention fee.

Come on the cyclists!!

Shaun is a Director of PL-UK Ltd – a respected provider of pharmacy jobs, both permanent and locum.

Has the £25 barrier been broken?

Ever since the fallow year of 2000, locum pharmacists have come up against a virtual glass ceiling when negotiating rates. The ceiling was £25 per hour an although some locums manged to negotiate slightly highly hourly fee’s for last minute bookings, most resorted to travel time to increase their income.

2008 has been different. We have been able to negotiate rates of £27, £30 and even £40 for our locums on numerous occasions. Why have things changed? I believe there’s a couple of main reasons.

Firstly everyone (Even locum coordinators) understands that in the present economic climate, things are tough and they expect goods and services to cost more. In addition there is no doubt that the increased demand on pharmacists time by additional services and 100 hour pharmacies has made a commodity that is in short supply, i.e. good quality locum pharmacists, even more in demand.

Whatever the reason we believe that these increased rates are here to stay so don’t fall for the usual attempt by the multiples, come the end of August to succeed. Demand that the increased rates remain and help yourself ease the pain of the credit crunch.

Shaun is a Director of PL-UK Ltd – a respected provider of pharmacy jobs, both permanent and locum.

Access to patient records

For the last week I’ve been working as a locum in a maximum security prison. There are lots of challenges to working in such an environment but one of the great things is the access I have to patient information. They run a system called Emis which all healthcare professionals can access and this contains information about medication, comments from practitioners about patient diagnosis, progress and behaviour and also lab results, scanned copies of letters from consultants  and other useful information.

This information access allows me to be able to judge whether the medication prescribed is appropriate and to support the primary prescriber to ensure that best use of the medication. It made me think: what difference would this make to pharmacy practice if we had access to such information in community pharmacy?

I think it would make a massive impact. To be able to inform a prescriber when a patient had picked up their medication, to inform them of any problems patients might be having with their medication or posting results of formal MUR’s would be invaluable for the prescriber. Being able to access most recent blood results, BP or blood sugar readings readings would enable pharmacists to counter prescribe more appropriately and support patients to improve their health. The NHS Card will enable this to happen so all locum pharmacists could support patients wherever they work

The prison service think they are well behind in terms of service delivery but they aren’t and in this aspect they are well aheal of the community curve.

Shaun is a Director of PL-UK Ltd – a respected provider of pharmacy jobs, both permanent and locum.