I experienced a curious sense of déjà vu as I oversaw the latest issue of The Pharmacist.
During this and our previous two issues, the headlines were dominated by the pharmacy funding cuts, and for good reason. For English contractors, losing such a large chunk of their income has been difficult, to say the least.
One contractor I spoke to recently told me how difficult it has become to keep staffing at its current levels – an issue echoed by exclusive figures uncovered by The Pharmacist earlier this year, which revealed that up to 12,000 pharmacy team jobs could be at risk because of the cuts.
So it’s little wonder that the sector refuses to stop railing against them, with both the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) and the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) lodging appeals against unsuccessful court cases this summer.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict whether the NPA or PSNC appeals will be successful. But for me, the best thing community pharmacy can do to prove its worth to the Government – and therefore why cutting its funding is foolish – is to showcase all the wonderful work you do day in, day out.
So it gives me great pleasure to introduce the first of The Pharmacist’s Clinical Champions – ordinary pharmacists just like you, doing extraordinary work in their communities. Find out how our latest Champion started his own travel clinic to serve his patients and – just as importantly – bolster his bottom line.
Click here to find out how you and your pharmacy team can apply to become Clinical Champions.
Now I don't doubt your sentiments and of course we should always highlight the good stuff we do.
However and I have seen this idea floated around a lot, the idea that if we prove our worth to the Government they will treat us well. I think this idea is wishful thinking.
If proving your worth led to good treatment by Government, teachers, junior doctors and nurses would be all much better treated than they currently are.
So who does the Government treat well? When the financial sector was in trouble, they asked the Government for money and the Government said how much? And without much hesitation issued them billions. Was this because they proved their worth? No.
My understanding of what happened but I could be wrong is that the leaders of banking sector threaten chaos. They told the politicians that if they were not bailed out, the system would collapse. Money would not come out of ATMs and wages would not transfer into employees accounts. Whether this was true or a bluff, the politicians believed them and felt dishing out the money was the lesser of two evils.
Now I certainly don't think pharmacists should threaten chaos but we do need to learn to play the game of politics better. Instead of spending our energy proving our worth I think we would be better off learning to lobby effectively and getting out into the national media and pushing narratives that play to our favour.
A narrative that might play to our favour is the idea that quality of service should always be the priority over cost. When you prioritise on quality you never regret it in the long run.
We also need to challenge the idea that austerity is somehow good for the economy. There is no historical evidence to back up the economic benefit of austerity. We as a profession need to learn more about economics to argue against austerity.
Pharmacists are smart people, if we read and learn about economics, we will learn how to dismantle the economic arguments that are in favour of under funding public services i.e. austerity. I would highly recommend reading Joseph Stiglitz. He is a nobel prize winning economist who takes austerity apart with great clarity.