The Pharmacists Voice last week (December 1) expressed its concerns that pharmacists are at risk of being “replaced by lower-paid staff”.
“While professional development is important, recent government policies and initiatives aimed at upskilling pharmacy technicians have inadvertently undermined the role of pharmacists,” it said in a letter to health secretary Wes Streeting, seen by C+D.
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“By granting pharmacy technicians increased autonomy, the profession risks being sidelined,” the body said.
“Reducing [pharmacists’] role in the healthcare system not only devalues the profession but also compromises patient care,” it added.
It called on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) to “prioritise protecting pharmacists’ roles and resist measures to dilute their responsibilities”.
“Breaking point”
The group, also known as the Pharmacist Association UK, said that the pharmacy sector in the UK is “at a breaking point”, faced with “plummeting pay rates”, “deteriorating working conditions” and an “exodus” of pharmacists from the profession.
“Urgent action is needed to address these issues and ensure the future survival of the profession,” it added.
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The letter called for an increase in pharmacist pay rates, an increase in contractor funding, support for locums, a reduction in university pharmacy student intake and for regulatory bodies to “safeguard the unique and vital role of pharmacists in healthcare”.
“Pharmacists are the backbone of healthcare in the UK,” Pharmacists Voice founder and director Yvonne Grant-Martin stressed.
But “despite their vital role, they are increasingly treated as expendable with their expertise undervalued and their pay rates drastically reduced,” she said.
“Exploitative” and “unsustainable”
The group highlighted that some locum pharmacists are offered “as little as £14 per hour – a rate lower than what pharmacists earned two decades ago”.
Anything “below £30 per hour is unacceptable” it declared, adding that “anything less is an insult to the profession and to public health” and that such a low rate “is not just exploitative – it is unsustainable”.
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The Pharmacists Voice also called on universities to “[reduce] the intake of pharmacy students” to address the “oversaturated job market”.
“[The] imbalance between supply and demand results in lower wages, as contractors exploit the competition among newly qualified pharmacists desperate to secure work,” it said.
“It is crucial for universities to take a more responsible approach to the number of students they admit,” it stressed.
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It comes as a study by the University of Manchester last month (November 8) revealed that 16% of pharmacy technician respondents in England were “actively looking to leave their careers” due to “low pay” and “poor career opportunities”.
Meanwhile, the government last week (November 26) told C+D that there will be no imminent review of pharmacy technician’s roles in the sector as it launched a review into physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs).
Last month, the Pharmacists Voice also wrote to British Medical Association (BMA) leadership urging it to reject a GP motion for pharmacy blood pressure checks to be “terminated with immediate effect” – which was later voted into official BMA policy.