Pharmacy is about drug delivery/outcomes. When there are no drugs, the clinical pharmacist or any pharmacist for that matter finds no use for his skills. Let the pharmacists take over everything about drugs-including being the main signatories for all funds available for purchase of drugs. A professional is that who can make decisions and/or solve problems. Let the pharmacists solve drugs supply, drug use, drug misuse, drugs abuse, drug underuse and drug overuse problems. You cant put to task a pharmacist for what they he (sorry for the use of one gender) is not responsible for in his performance appraisal-he is not responsible for the perennial stock outs! In the same breath you cant squeeze the juice out of somebody's profession, curtail his job satisfaction and and go ahead and expect him to deliver. It consummately baffles me when the system lets someone who is not a pharmacist take over the most pleasant, most innovative, most outstanding and most progressive part of my job, and leaves me to do the most mechanical and repetitive (read boring) part of the job; a part that does not give me the chance to grow and take more responsibility before my retirement.
This meeting is very timely and the record needs to be set straight. The 'local arrangement' management of the public sector where one person is everything has to stop. Everything we do from now henceforth has to be supported by the law. If the law as it is has in any way derailed or has attempted to derail and threatened the survival of the pharmacy profession, then we must act and fast. We must not engage without putting conditions. We have to tell them what needs to be done, or ask them to stop training pharmacists altogether. No office must curtail and abruptly bring to an end to the dreams of any Kenyan child. Even more importantly, no individual should ever be allowed to have such powers.
On that score, this is the most irresponsible, most corrupted and and the most confused health system that has ever been in the world.
Everyone wants to play your role, qualifications notwithstanding, when there is money and blame you for their mess when the money runs out or where there is no money.
Please allow those pharmacists who are still in public sector to have something to do and be happy about, or the average age for those who can still stomach those issues will always be below 30. Need I say that pharmacists in public sector are all young and 'inexperienced', and that this will go on for as long as there is nothing to do 'for pharmacy' there? Who wants to grow old in such a system?
That meeting, I will attend; not for me, but for others who need me. I would want to return to the public sector as a 'Director' or as a PS, not as a spineless 'Chief' who cannot even be allowed to manage his own secretary by a guy who makes up for his lack of eloquence with hate and tyranny.
If the way forward of that meeting does not tackle the autonomy and clear career progression of pharmacists; one that will make an individual pharmacist plan his career life by saying 'I will go back to school, to do this so that I become this...et cetera et cetera'..., then we are doing nothing. We must say if we are not able to achieve to this end over a certain time-frame, then lets all resign from this job with false sense of security, we venture out there together and take over the pharmaceutical economy, because even that we have let others to. Then we start managing all drug issues, in all pharmacy specialties and sub-specialties that we will define, and in our own terms. Who said pharmacists can only achieve the health ministry goals by remaining as their employees? So long as we keep a few in the critical areas and pray to God; and pray really hard that they stop being part of the problem that is already undermining them anyway, then we are set. I hope they see that point and realize that the day pharmacists are empowered, they too will gain but ten-fold, and PPB might just become the most powerful institution in the health or even the larger social sector. Somebody needs to open their eyes, and take them back to the day they decided as a high school graduates to pursue pharmacy. That nostalgic feeling has to come back. They should be allowed to take their minds through on wild journey of the reason they were born.
So what is this thing that pharmacists can do in their own right without reference to anybody else? Everything. Did you know that the only way you can shape legislative process is by being a strong and visible lobby group and with money to boot? Our lawmakers can only debate on your issues when they are pampered and taken for some luxurious retreat somewhere, at your cost
