Call to meet OH&S rules

Simone Roberts

Following the release of guidelines on appropriate workloads for pharmacists by the Pharmacists Board of Queensland last month, the Pharmacist Division of APESMA, the association representing employee pharmacists, has raised concerns over unsustainable workloads and inadequate rest breaks for employee pharmacists.

While APESMA says the situation has been somewhat alleviated by the record number of pharmacy graduates recently entering the workforce, it claims the issue remains for many.

The association's most recent remuneration survey of members found that 63.2 per cent of community pharmacists work through their lunch breaks.

The problem has resulted from several years of the pharmacist shortage, together with the remuneration model that sees pharmacists paid for dispensing prescriptions, said Geoff March, president of the Pharmacist Division of APESMA.

"There is still a lot of pressure being put on pharmacists to dispense high volumes of prescriptions with minimal waiting time. Short waiting times is seen by some as the ultimate in customer service and a competitive advantage," he said.

"The Queensland guidelines are an honest, non-coercive attempt to bring many workplaces into line with OH&S standards held as normal in many other industries. We encourage all boards and professional indemnity insurance bodies to establish such guidelines, but we then need the capacity for these organisations to undertake audits and publicly impose sanctions on owners or companies that are not abiding by these," he said.

Reviewing dispensing volumes, the Pharmacists Board of Queensland resisted calls to mandate maximum dispensing rates but said it would be concerned if pharmacists were consistently dispensing in excess of 150 prescriptions per eight hour day per pharmacist and working more than 60 hours a week.

Mr March questioned the recommended cut-off, saying 60 hours was way too long a working week and unsafe for the community.

He said a change in marketing Australian community pharmacy services to the public and looking at alternative remuneration mechanisms may be warranted and suggested penalising high prescription turnover pharmacies which are inadequately staffed.