Pharmacy queues

[Bemyclementine]

Are Pharmacies woefully understaffed? It seems that i can't go in one eithout there being a huge , very slow moving queue.

The one attached to my GP - I can request a repeat prescription on the app. Did mine Monday last week at 8am. Just went in, massive queue of people who have turned up to collect their repeats but none of them done, so the staff are sorting through a "pile" to do there and then.

Had to go to 4 different pharmacies to find eye drops for DS, every one has the sane going on.

In our area lots of pharmacies have closed.

Our local one struggled badly during covid, terrible queues and long waits for repeat prescriptions. Since then all the old staff have left, often there is no pharmacist so they can’t give out prescriptions at all. I thought it was going to close. Recently it seems slightly better, but still different staff every visit. I’ve heard that many drugs are in very short supply or completely unavailable.

Yes the ones local to use are all understaffed.

Ours is a nightmare. Massive queues, lost prescriptions etc. And it’s really small.

Theyve tried to move to bigger premises twice but the nhs wouldn’t fund it.

Because of Brexit drug shortages pharmacies often don't make up your prescription until you turn up rather than have no stock for the people who arrive because it's all in bags on the shelf for people who aren't here yet.

My oh was complaining about the q at boots yesterday

There are some processes they need to follow that are counter productive to efficiency but are necessary because of the dangers of giving the wrong medication.

It means that what seems like it should be a simple: read prescription, remove pills from shelf, put in bag. Actually turns into: 2 people read prescription, pills taken from shelf placed in basket, basket added to pile, pile worked through by 2nd person who verifies contents are correct and match prescription, 1st person then bags and labels......

They have prescriptions being added to the list by people walking in, people ordering online, Drs sending them through directly, repeat orders, nursing home orders......

So there's a visible queue and then this invisible iceberg of extra work being added that the customers in branch don't see.

It is really annoying though, I hate going to the pharmacy.

At our local pharmacy it's all people being told their prescription is out of stock, and having to be told to go back to the GP and ask for something different. It's so slow because most people either don't understand what 'out of stock' means and have to be told several times what to do next, or else they kick off because they've been waiting for an hour and they feel ill.

It's just miserable for everybody concerned, on both sides of the counter.

It is miserable. Ours seems well staffed, at least there are several people there. A couple of new ones today I noticed.

There doesn't seem to be any sense of "getting on with it" but then I imagine that's to do with the processes described above.

I did check on my app and it did say ready to collect. I assume that's automatic after 5 days rather than someone checking a box (given that it wasn't ready)

You have an app? We get a text message……. Sometimes.

My local one (Boots) send a text when it's ready to be collected.
I pick up prescriptions for my son and instead of them being filled instore, Boots outsource it to a third party location who send them to each store. I used to be able to pick up a prescription 3 days after requesting a repeat but now it takes 7-10 days.

7-10 days?!😲

My crap chemist turn them round in 24 hours!

Lots of supermarket and high street pharmacies have closed recently which is putting pressure on other pharmacies; their workload in some cases will have doubled and staffing levels not caught up. Budgets aside some don't physically have space for more staff!

Crap pay, understaffed, don't want to take untrained staff on and don't have the man power to train newbies up. Some companies like boots for example are very strict on employing ex employees, and there's minimal chance of career progression/ boosting your income because none of them want to pay out to train further. You'd be lucky to get anything above minimum wage in pharmacy jobs. considering the risk, stress and workload, most people leave as quickly as they start.
And I hate to say it, but every pharmacy job I have left has been down to lazy colleagues leaving me to pick up the shit day in day out, whilst upto 8 of them could be stood out the back chatting/watching TV 🤷🏻‍♀️

Have you ever looked at the wages front- end pharmacy staff get?

Minimum wage. They need special industry qualifications too. Any kind of driver gets paid a lot more. They also take a lot of abuse from the public. So understaffing wouldn’t surprise me.

Our local pharmacy is always an efficient hive of activity but I've had to stop using them for DS1's prescription because one of his tablets is a shortage drug (nothing to do with brexit) and they've not been able to fill it consistently. I've had more success with a Well pharmacy.

Boots have always been a dead loss.

I have voted with my feet. I now use an online pharmacy. My son needs his tablets every month and I was sick of wasting an hour or more waiting for them.

There's obviously not enough pharmacy graduates to fill the roles.

I couldn’t use online as 2 of my medications were on a special list and one has to be dispensed every 3 weeks.

They can only do normal stuff that is requested every 4 weeks.

And the post is also shit.

I work in pharmacy and there have never been as many stock shortages as there are currently. It’s a daily battle getting enough medication to fill the prescriptions. Plus staff morale is in the pits.

I go to Boots, and they are sometimes OK, but sometimes not great. I put my (repeat) meds in online, (Monday morning,) and they are rarely ready til the following Monday or Tuesday. Sometimes I ring on the Thursday and ask when they will be ready, and they say 'by Saturday afternoon.' So I go in, and they're not ready. 'Oh come back in an hour..' they say. 'We'll have them ready then!'

So I have queued for 15 minutes or more, and then have to go back an hour later to get them (coz they weren't ready!) And then I have to wait again! And even then, there is sometimes something missing, (as it's not in stock,) and I have to go back (AGAIN!)

Sometimes there is only the pharmacist in, and one staff member - behind the pharmacy counter. Then if the one staff member is caught up trying to sort someone's meds (eg, because the GP hasn't sent it through yet and the customer has only got one tablet left,) the queue is held up for the 3-5 minutes she is sorting the customer's issue. So everyone is waiting for that one staff member to finish with that one customer. I have seen 20 or more people waiting some days.

I have waited 20 minutes in there on quite a number of occasions this past year, and a few times even 25 minutes. It's very rare it's less than 10 minutes. Same in the pharmacy attached to the GP. There are 3 or 4 more people behind the counter, but the service is the same. Masses of people waiting - 15 to 20 minutes on average, and like with Boots, half the time they don't have the meds in, and you have to go back again with your 'owing' slip!

As has been said, I don't recall it being like this before the pandemic.

My local Boots is very slow too. Went in last week to pick up prescription that was ready. Only 2 people in front of me, though I'd be in and out in 5 minutes, it took about 20.

She served one prescription person then sloooowly moved over and served a couple of over the counter customers, then like a snail back to the next prescription customer. She just didn't give a shit at all. When she finally served me she asked my date of birth and asked if I was 'Mr x'. I'm clearly a woman.

Yes, local to me they are understaffed, poorly paid and deal with pissed off customers all day. Because it's so horrible to work there, absence rates are high, staff turnover is high (so everyone is new and doesn't know what they're doing). It just spirals.
Brexit has made the stock shortages a complete nightmare too.

My local is great. Rarely a queue, I pick up my prescription and they ask if I want it repeated, I say yes and they tell me the date to expect it and I get a text message to collect. I go in the afternoon to pick up and it's there ready for me. Never had to wait longer than 1 or 2 people in the queue.

As has been said, I don't recall it being like this before the pandemic.

Before the pandemic we were in the EU.