What the hell is going on with pharmacies

[thinkponk48]

There are three pharmacies in my town. All three have restricted opening hours. I stood in line for 25 min a few days ago to get a prescription filled. I was told it had to be ordered and pick it up today. Got there Today and pharmacy closed!!!!

Are companies not paying properly or are we suddenly short of pharmacists

Im not even talking about not being able to get certain drugs I understand supply chain issues but I don't understand the staffing issues. Surely this is big chains cutting costs

Yep, the chains don’t want to hire enough pharmacists (or techs/dispensers) and won’t pay the required locum rates (but the employers just say they can’t find a locum).

Lots of pharmacists and techs are jumping ship to primary care (working in a GP surgeries) or CCG/ICB roles because the work life balance is better.

So what’s left is understaffed and overworked. The companies won’t let the pharmacies keep enough stock so they have to order it when you bring your script in.

It's absolutely immoral. People bees their medication. My child is seriously ill ans we have the added stress of being able to find a pharmacy that's even open

No problems with any of hours the majority have 1 pharmacist and shut for dinner

Nearly as hard to see a pharmacist as a gp in my town now.

Quite lucky here. Within 3 miles we have tesco 8 30 till 8 mon to sat 10 till 4 sun

Two attached to health centres both open till 10.30pm feom 7am.

Boots in town centre is quite late.

And lots of lloyds /small boots

2 independent ones.

Do you have a walk in Centre nearby? Many have on-site pharmacies that keep to the hours of the walk-in.

No wven the one connected to the local drs has reduced its hours and you can never be sure if it's open.

All the pharmacies in Sainsbury are closing. Lots of our local pharmacies have closed recently.

Ours is the same, always long queues outside for prescriptions. You always have to come back after handing in the prescription (another 30+ mins queuing) then they have trouble finding stuff, rifling in boxes and 'going out the back" asking for help.
I signed up online for postal delivery which is great for long term meds, but doesn't work if you're sick and need something like antibiotics ASAP.

My local Well pharmacy seems to be on its last legs, I go in monthly for a prescription and have seen it deteriorate. The regular pharmacists have gone, all but one regular staff member have gone. The new staff don’t seem remotely interested or keen to be there, I’m sure they’re on a low wage but handing out medication needs some level of competence. The pharmacist is different every time. The shelves are almost bare. It used to be great, it’s very unfortunate.

I use a large Boots. Even they keep having odd days when theybare shut because the pharmacist is absent and they dint have a locum.

Someone posted an article about short supplies of pharmaceutical goods, which I now can't find.

but between that and the shortage of staff (understandable) it's going to be an issue for a while.

Snap! I just moved pharmacies as we have 2 in our town and one seems to be on its last legs. Looks like its been looted inside, hardly any normal stock. I heard someone ask for Night Nurse - none in.
Before Christmas they handed me back my usual prescription for inhalers and HRT (which I know can be hard to source) but they couldn't get the inhalers either! Just said sorry you need to try elsewhere.
They also filled a prescription for DD and when I walked away and looked in the bag half was missing so had to go back while they did it properly.
My friend needed something recently for her DM who is having chemo and needs to inject herself with something else and she couldn't get it anywhere, finally got some and no-one was interested in showing her how to do the injections or anything, it's totally broken down.

The pharmacies could definitely get locums if they paid more, the multiples don’t want to pay. There are fewer locums now than a decade ago because a lot of pharmacists don’t want to work for £20-25/hr (and be self-employed) but if they offered £40+ then there would be people who’d take it.

It’s such a sad state of affairs, working in community pharmacy used to be a really valued job and now the managers are running it into the ground.

A family member runs a pharmacy. Since covid the workload has increased massively, combined that with the difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff and medicine shortages, they are on their knees.

My niece managed a very busy LLoyds pharmacy in a Sainsburys which is now closing-LLoyds closing all of the in-house branches-just making the pressure on the other options worse.

My GP issues batch prescriptions to my pharmacy and one of the women there deals with getting a batch of drugs ready to pick up each month just before the last batch runs out. I have to renew the prescriptions every three months with the GP but the pharmacist does remind me that its time to do that.

If you used a regular pharmacy you could ask if they offer a service like that? It saves so much time and bother. Local pharmacies can be very helpful if you're a regular and they get to know you.

I just went to Boots and there was a sign up saying closing for lunch due to staffing issues. I’ve never seen that before.

pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/feature/there-is-an-official-shortage-of-pharmacists-what-now

It looks like there's a shortage of pharmacists.

Yeah a nightmare finding one that's open, then they don't have the medication in stock, shelves half empty except for the wall of vapes. Since when was vaping healthcare?

The multiples are largely to blame, they want this, they've been pushing for a very long time for remote supervision i.e where one pharmacist is responsible for multiple branches at one time. So they deliberately cut staff hours and make the working conditions awful.

There is also the issue of funding, pharmacies are not being renumerated properly for the cost of medication which has risen significantly over the last couple of years. This has an impact on the independent pharmacies who simply cannot afford to stay open.

Community pharmacy is a thankless job, the staff get routinely abused my the public which adds to the stress. I left during Covid. No regrets.

Our local Well pharmacy attached to our Doctors used to be brilliant. Now the better established pharmacists are long gone and working in the attached Doctors surgery.

Every time you go in all the staff are different. At one point the temp pharmacist giving me a flu jab a few years ago was travelling two hours each day by train from a large city and he was so stressed he was close to tears.

The pharmacy system is in crisis and a complete mess: massive jumbled up queues; some waiting to hand a prescription in, some collecting items, some people waiting and other people waiting to try and ask the pharmacists a question as they can’t see a GP or book a flu jab etc.

I used to do locum pharmacist work for Lloyds, about 10 years ago, and I have changed my field of work since then. I had an email from Lloyds this week asking if I was interested in a job.....it was at the same rate of pay I was on 15 years ago when I first locumed, and it's a 45 hour week......I'm not surprised they can't find good people interested in that. Very sad to hear about the closures and reduced hours, for patients and pharmacists too. It used to be a tough but enjoyable job, it must be awful now.

A familiar story, @DrNowt. It is the same in teaching. Invitations to return to the classroom, although paid as a cover supervisor at £10 per hour, contact time only, just do not have the necessary appeal, does it?

We had a 24 hour independent pharmacy in my town. It was absolutely brilliant. Not having to time your visits in working hours, literally 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

This all stopped over covid and now they do 9-5 Monday to Friday. I asked why and they said covid. Its 2023 covid is long gone. So disappointing!