I
had previously made a couple of attempts at getting my pharmacy
accredited.
Each time however, some problem would occur, such as the loss of
a key staff member, which would cause me to put the whole thing
on the backburner.
The task always seemed so daunting that I looked for any excuse
not to do it.
I went onto
the Quality Care Website to re-familiarize myself with the process.
To my dismay I discovered that the people at the "Quality
Care Department" had decided to make several changes to the
process with their "annual reviews".
In my view the only purpose of these changes was to make an already
difficult task nearly impossible.
So after two
weeks, many hours of work, and countless trips to Officeworks,
I am well on my way to being ready for accreditation.
It has been an extremely painful experience.
Many times I've been ready to give up in exasperation.
Sometimes, I cannot believe some of the ridiculous things that
they want us to do.
It's as if the people who have designed the program think that
we have little else to occupy our time. Business plans, Staff
appraisals, Incident reports, Performance benchmarking, Privacy
Acts, Occupational Health and Safety reports, Pharmacy Appearance
reports, the list goes on and on.
If they expect us to write endless reports and document everything
we do, then how much time does this leave us to spend doing the
most important thing in our pharmacies, serving our customers.
In my pharmacy, as in most small businesses, if something needs
to be done, you just do it.
If you need to borrow money, your bank may ask you to do a business
plan.
If you need to tell your staff something, you tell them.
If you need to change a light globe you just change it. (How many
Quality Care Accredited pharmacists do you need to change a light
globe? Answer: Two. One to write a report, and the other to get
up the ladder).
The frustration
that they are causing us is endless.
Is all this work and stress worth the $7500?
The answer to this is, probably not!
So why did
I decide to continue do it, despite all the frustrations?
I am not quite
sure.
Perhaps it's because I am passionate about my business.
Perhaps it's because, it may be in the long-term interest of my
profession.
Perhaps it's because we need to raise the standard of our industry,
and this is a means of showing government that we are actually
doing this.
My only hope is that at the end of the day, this and future governments
will sit up and take notice.
I suspect that if we resist, they will one day make HIC Approval
numbers conditional upon accreditation. Then all those pharmacists
who decided that accreditation was not worth the effort will regret
not having taken the $7500 while it was on offer.
By all means,
the presentation of accredited pharmacies must be up to scratch.
Staff must also be well trained in providing good customer service.
Certain processes and procedures must be implemented, particularly
with regard to S2 and S3's. However, they must condense the requirements
and allow us to concentrate on only the important things that
actually influence our customer's perceptions of what represents
a good pharmacy.
They must not bog us down in unnecessary paperwork and reports
that will never be read.
If the Pharmacy
Guild is serious about getting the great majority of pharmacies
accredited, they must act immediately to make the accreditation
process less onerous and much simpler.
The Guild
must act now before it is too late.
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