There’s more to pharmacy than meets the eye, as Pat Kelly discovered in his time as a healthcare journalist and editor
Eleven years ago, I had little idea of what a pharmacist was capable of, never mind the intricacies of the profession. You were shadowy figures, scurrying about behind a hip-height partition, with your counter staff as the gatekeepers. You were ‘just popping pills’ into a jar and printing off instructions, perhaps occasionally grinding a couple of ingredients together. It was a comfortable ignorance. You were ‘the chemists’. The idea that pharmacists could be scientists, often involved in cutting-edge clinical research, or instrumental in saving people’s lives, was far off the radar for the average Joe like yours truly. ‘Go down to the chemist’s shop and get me a jar of chamomile lotion, will you love,’ my mother would say.
I don’t think it’s inaccurate to use that guy of 11 years ago as a yardstick for the average person’s level of understanding of what you do. Bring it back to when I was a young adult in the late 1980s, when my understanding was even more skewed. The pharmacists seemed a lot older. Maybe that memory has been distorted by time. All the guards and doctors seemed much older too, through the prism of a youthful eye.
One thing is for sure: some of the counter staff back then took on notions of grandeur because of their ‘gatekeeper’ role. The general public were more reverential towards people in authority, and the white coat was indeed a symbol of authority. Surely, they only sold those coats to people who went to a fancy college, we thought.
A teenage girl who lived across the street from me got a job as a pharmacy counter assistant at the in-house pharmacy in the village Quinnsworth. For those of you young and lucky enough to not know what that is, it was a prominent supermarket chain – I believe the slogan was, ‘Let’s get it all together at Quinnsworth’, hence the in-house pharmacies. Quinnsworth also gave birth to the ‘yellow pack’ concept in Ireland. But as usual, I digress.
Anyway, old ladies started to stop the girl across the street to ask her for health advice. Within six months, she had developed a posh accent, her posture improved, and she started to avoid guys like me. In the latter, she was certainly better off.
From there, I ended up cutting my teeth as a journalist in Brussels in the 1990s, drifting home in the latter part of that decade. A few years later, I segued into medical journalism as a sub-editor and writer for a now-defunct medical publication called Medicine Weekly. It was the mid-1990s, and vast tsunamis of money seemed to be washing over people everywhere. It was all an illusion of course, and luckily I didn’t avail of those letters from the bank, telling me I had been pre-approved for a €15,000 loan that I hadn’t applied for.
It was not uncommon at Medicine Weekly to produce 80-page issues every week, packed with content and advertising. Then 2007 came around, and we all know what happened next – that newspaper was one of the first casualties in 2008.
From there, medical/pharmacy journalism and I parted company for a few years. Then roughly 11 years ago, I got the opportunity to take the reins as Editor of Irish Pharmacist. I jumped at the chance and have not regretted it.
I became absorbed in the world of pharmacy, with all its side rooms. The learning curve was steep. The lowest-profile pharmacists to me were the ones who worked in industry. Not far above these people on the scale of awareness were the hospital pharmacists. However, a personal experience with hospital pharmacy some years ago enlightened me, when my late mother’s life was saved by a medications review conducted by a vigilant hospital pharmacist. Somebody rubbed a lamp, and they appeared, later melting back into the basement pharmacy department when she had recovered and was granted a few more years. Pharmacists are now even more involved in MDTs and clinical decision-making than back then, but that trend needs to grow and accelerate.
I came to realise that pharmacists are a core thread woven through the health system that helps to keep it together. In the community, pharmacists are now depended upon more than ever to shore-up a shaky primary care system. ‘Do more, without necessarily getting any more money for it’, successive governments have demanded. I’ve watched health ministers come and go, one after the other, each making more seductive noises than the last one. All guff, apparently. FEMPI reversal is still a thing, and still the red tape and admin keep piling up.
I foresee a time when pharmacists will be forced to become more militant. One or two more slaps in the face fee-wise, or a few more layers of bureaucracy, or perhaps another recession, might do it. A part of me would like to see pharmacists brandishing placards at the gates of Dáil Éireann. At least it might make more people aware that the profession faces some problems, many of which could be solved with some goodwill on the part of government. If all else fails, team up with the French farmers. Now, there’s a bunch of lads who know how to make a nuisance of themselves.
However, when there is a crisis, such as a recession, pharmacists are distinct from other professions in their attitude, in my opinion. Pharmacists tend to complain less about the position they have been dropped into, and are more inclined to just get on with it. It’s an admirable quality, but is becoming less common in a world addicted to outrage.
Your columnists, past and present, have of course tried to keep these issues front-and-centre among the pharmacy community over the years in Irish Pharmacist. They have also brought you the lesser-spotted aspects of pharmacy science, and sometimes a humorous ‘sideways’ look at the profession and its challenges. Thoughtful and insightful commentary, along with original clinical content written by pharmacists for pharmacists, is the backbone of the magazine.
A part of me would like to see pharmacists brandishing placards at the gates of Dáil Éireann
Irish Pharmacist is a trade publication. But as trade publications go, the ones that cater for the scientific medical and healthcare community are at the top of the ‘food chain’, so to speak. That’s why for any journalist to have the opportunity to edit the most prominent independent magazine in its field is a privilege.
For any publication to reach a 25-year milestone is a significant achievement. For it to survive the recession and come back stronger, and in a state of constant evolution, is remarkable. It has been an honour to be your Editor for the past 11 years. God willing, I’ll be back this year to learn some more from you. In the meantime, I rest easy in the knowledge that you are in the safe hands of my colleague Dave O’Riordan.
That’s all from me until the 50th anniversary.
