HEADER “I think the mental


health and wellbeing of pharmacy teams


will come to the fore more as we go forward. Some


people have worked every day without a break, without


holidays. If you are doing 50 per cent


more business in one month, what does


that mean to you as a pharmacist and to your staff?”


However, I think the real difficulties of the early days have now been replaced by a much more measured and controlled response.


I think the mental health and wellbeing of pharmacy teams will come to the fore more as we go forward. Some people have worked every day without a break, without holidays. If you are doing 50 per cent more business in one month, what does that mean to you as a pharmacist and to your staff? So, we have to be really mindful as we go into the recovery phase that it has to be about staff. People need their breaks; they need their holidays. How do we make sure that people are looking after each other? I do absolutely want to stress that everyone across our pharmacy network, be it working in community, managed services and GP practices, need to take care of themselves because burnout is a real issue that we need to be mindful of.


The crisis has had an impact also on people at the start of their careers and others who had retired.


If we look at preregistration students: Our trainees are not quite finished their studies. They have done their 39-week assessments with their tutors. The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) are looking at a range of options for the pre-registration postponed assessment and we understand they have written to all pre-reg students.


dreadful pandemic. Supported by directors of pharmacy across the West of Scotland, with NES helping with workforce, everyone pulled together to get the governance and the operation up and running.


I think, at the start, our main concerns were about physical distancing and PPE. We benefited from the guidance we got from Health Protection Scotland to inform the advice we were able to give community pharmacies. PPE such as facemasks was made available, though probably not as quickly as everybody would have wanted, and we now have a direct phone line where pharmacists can order and reorder supplies when they need to. I have visited several community pharmacies and seen the difficulties some have faced trying to create safe distancing in smaller spaces.


I have discussed the GPhC’s proposal for a provisional register with their director in Scotland, Laura Fraser, and I know the directors of pharmacy are actively involved too as we look to ensure arrangements put in place are practicable and fair, and provide the necessary safeguards to patients and the public. We know where all our trainees are, we know who might be struggling, we have a really good governance and support network of our tutors. I hope this will mean that we can have more flexibility in Scotland around how a provisional register might work.


We absolutely understand that their training is not the same as it would have been, but I know it will prove valuable experience. Meanwhile, those already on the register and thinking about what to cite during


revalidation won’t find it difficult to think of examples of how their practice has adapted to challenges!


For someone who was on the cusp of retiring, I have to say thank you to those experienced people who had already retired and who reregistered to offer their services. We know that more than 300 pharmacists and more than 200 technicians returned to the register to offer their services in Scotland, and many of them have been using their skills in different ways: some working remotely, others working in procurement, safety and governance, others with NHS 24.


I would like to say a big thank you to each of you, whatever role you have played.


There are things that I believe should not, and will not, return, after the COVID-19 crisis, to how they were before.


The first is the public’s recognition of the pharmacy profession as a whole, and particularly of their local community pharmacy. Pharmacy is the only healthcare service that the public could access unchanged throughout and, while there have been some horror stories, it has generally received the respect of the public – something I think that will remain as part of the ‘new normal’. For the teams themselves, access to the ECS will stay – that barrier has been crossed.


We will also get back on track with services such as the Medicines Care and Review and Pharmacy First, and having the right IT for them. We didn’t roll out NHS Pharmacy First on the date that we wanted to because of the crisis, but we did extend the Minor Ailments Service and that allowed community pharmacists to cope with maybe 80 per cent of what would have happened across the community. We will deliver Pharmacy First, I hope sooner rather than later, but, in the meantime, we can increase our state of readiness for it and work on the IT. We are all keen to take advantage of the three year funding deal we have in place and to restart the early conversations about Pharmacy First Plus.


As we look to the future after the COVID-19 crisis, there are other issues we need to deal with. Repeat prescribing management in GP practice need to work better for everyone. We are thinking about what new discharge planning models from hospitals can look like and how can we bring primary care and community pharmacy into that as well. We need to look not just at IT systems but also wider digitalisation. We’ve seen NHS Near Me and the video Attend Anywhere models being used.


What do those mean for community pharmacy? Video consultation is not for everyone, but we have seen in times of crisis what can be done. So what might we do with video consultation for community and hospital pharmacy? Policymakers have recognised what pharmacy is doing – and can do - particularly the Cabinet Secretary for Health, who has been really positive through all of this about the role pharmacy has been playing. So we have a good opportunity, and her support, to hang onto the good and jettison the bad.


I joined the register in 1982. As a young and naive pre-reg, I worked in a hospital, doing my Masters training there before moving to other areas. So much has changed for the better over the years since. We have gone from a period where it seemed mainly to be about formulation, dispensing and supply, to being much more patient-focused, utilising the knowledge and skills of pharmacists in a very different way.


So, when I was a pre-reg, I would be looking at operational things like distribution and supply of medicines across the hospital wards. At the end of my time working in hospital, the focus had moved to being directly involved in patient care and providing advice to prescribers and others.


The one thing that I have missed out on, and others now have the opportunity to embrace, is being a prescriber. I think utilising pharmacists’ knowledge and skills around prescribing, being the actual prescriber, taking accountability and responsibility for those medicines decisions, will be at the heart of the ‘new normal’ for pharmacy and a huge opportunity for our profession.


SCOTTISH PHARMACIST - 7


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48