‘Expect nothing, accept everything’ is a fine mantra on paper, until life intervenes, writes Ultan Molloy
I’m sitting down to write this just a day or so after our new Minister for Health (MoH) offered a €5 dispensing fee, bypassing the IPU from the looks of it, to dispense ‘free’
HRT to women who need it. It would be great to get the scheme up and running, but what a half-arsed shot from the hip again by a politician? Offering ‘the shilling’ to those who’ll take it and hope for the best then in terms of admin, details of the scheme, etc, and set a low bar on what we should be getting as a professional fee, given the FEMPI cuts we have lived with for what now feels like a lifetime.
I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not at all really. An appetite for progress following on from months of stagnation, and a proposed plan that clearly lacked the required details, with a now-former Minister and former politician.
The vision and appetite for constructive collaboration still eludes us in community pharmacy. It’s frustrating. A new Minister in situ now, who prefers to tempt community pharmacists with a €1,000 once-off payment, instead of offering details on a scheme that we all would like to have had in place months ago, with a clear administration requirement and appropriate fee that’s linked to inflation, and starts at an appropriate level given dramatic cost increases in recent years.
We pick up a huge tab for the health service, and this continues to go unnoticed and unacknowledged by the HSE. In the last week, we have had three major drug interactions picked up and sorted, addressed numerous queries on hospital scripts with items missing, getting photos of leg bags sent to us, and tracked down, where a patient had no script, and the GPs/nurses didn’t want anything to do with it, doing blister trays for patients, doing home visits, supporting a very mentally unstable patient whose medical card is expired, he can’t afford the medicines, and “what are we going to do about it”.
Indeed, it’s transpired recently that a local surgery has been screening our calls and not answering when we were chasing up Healthmail queries sent on behalf of patients. “We’re very busy” was the gruff reply, before another half-baked script was sent on several hours later with further errors. It’s gone beyond a joke.
The list goes on, and on, and on. Fire-fighting daily. All in the background though really, isn’t it. What are we going to do? Start charging for phone calls, prescription interventions, patient printouts, Med1 printouts, etc? It’s obvious that the State doesn’t value our work. It has to start with ourselves though, and how we manage and value our time.
I’m in the US with my family at the time of writing this. Our flight over lacked the pomp of my previous journeys, now over a decade ago, and felt more like a short haul than a trans-Atlantic. The food was well below average, although the convenience of Shannon and the on- board team were great.
I had arrived in Shannon apprehensive about getting through US customs, having heard horror stories of detention, and refusal of travel for people with anti-Trump or anti-American content on their phone. Crikey, who doesn’t have something on their phone at this point that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as such. As it turned out, the US border guards had no interest in my phone, much like the young chap at the Aer Lingus check-in counter had no interest in checking in anyone for their flight. He was hydrating himself well mind you with a bottle of Evian. The airport restaurant staff were having chats and reviewing rotas in the background rather than serving customers after we did get checked in by a lovely girl, whose efficiency and interest in customers was in stark contrast to her well-hydrated colleague the next desk over.
I had been at a pharmacy panel discussion the week before, where a colleague cited ‘Service’ as the single biggest factor in business success. “That’s what it comes down to: Service,” he said. After months of no-news, the MoH press releases regarding HRT, and the mess since, along with the apprehension of US customs, our little flower hydrating himself, and hidden staff at the restaurant, I was finding it hard to remain Zen.
“Expect Nothing, Accept Everything,” I had noted down from a pop psychology podcast a week or so ago. That would be so liberating in many ways, I remember thinking at the time. It sets such a low bar, however, I don’t know if I could possibly live that mantra. Being let down is no fun mind you, either in personal or professional relationships and circumstances. One’s expectations can be an abundant source of hardship. I’m going to have to think more about that one.
It’s obvious that the State doesn’t value our work. It has to start with ourselves though, and how we manage and value our time
What’s a reasonable expectation is, of course, open to interpretation. Is a simple nod or word of acknowledgement when you arrive at an airline counter, or a restaurant counter, or indeed a pharmacy counter, too much to ask? That’s just depressing to think about. The inability of service staff to make the connection between understand treating the customer as a priority, the success of the business, and the wage packet they take home, continues to boggle me.
I don’t know if it’s getting worse or better either. I know I am getting worse, in that my tolerance for poor service at this point in my life runs close to zero. ‘It’s not personal’, ‘it’s their problem, not yours’, etc, I’ve been told, and I understand how believing this could help. It is personal though, and more often than not, it is being made my problem, and not theirs. Bear with me on this. I’m working on a positive resolution along the lines of, ‘expect nothing and accept everything’, but there’s a missing piece that we need to bring this paradigm to a healthy conclusion.
It’s different here in the US, mind you. Service is friendly and excellent for the most part, with staff attentive, as their tips depend on it. Nothing like having a bit of skin in the game.
On a separate note, I am appalled on a daily basis by the awful situation for the two million or so Palestinians who live in Gaza. With plans to turn it into a holiday resort of some sort — ‘The Trump Plan’ I believe the Israeli Prime Minister called it — it’s such a tragedy for all involved and for those who are complicit. I am doing what I can with my business purchasing choices, and with donations, in order to alleviate some of the sense of guilt I carry around it given my own values. This still feels like very little when I look at my children, with somewhere between 50 and 100 thousand people dead in the last eighteen months, and one-fifth of them being children.
We’ll see what Trump plan is imposed on the Irish pharmaceutical industry also in due course, won’t we. The Government pausing the start of statutory pension entitlements, where they pay just €1 of the €7 going into the pension, tells its own tale. Perhaps some thought will also be given to our €224 billion national debt. What a gravy train we have had over the last 20 or so years, thanks in no small part to our low corporate tax rate.
I wonder, what will the next 20 look like?
Living in ‘interesting times’ has me regularly now looking at my young children, considering their future, and repeatedly reminding myself that things are never as good or as bad as one thinks they are.
Ultan Molloy is a business and professional performance coach, pharmacist, facilitator, and development specialist. He works with other pharmacists, business owners, and third parties to develop business strategies. Ultan can be contacted on 086 169 3343.
