Technology is there to enhance our practice, and these advancements should also apply to the PSI elections, writes Áine Mac Grory
The more I bring up progress and innovation, the more I realise what a large cohort of my professional counterparts consider the use of AI technologies like ChatGPT with the same level of disdain as someone googling answers at a pub table quiz. ‘Bad’, ‘cheating’, ‘lazy’.
A colleague of mine, Leon O’Hagan, recently won the IIOP competition on the future of pharmacy. He wrote an article with the help of AI by providing prompts to encourage it to think of current and developing technologies in pharmacy and pharmaceutical care.
At first, ‘pub quiz cheater’ was my knee-jerk reaction, but a light-bulb moment hit me when he said, “Just because you have access to a Ferrari doesn’t mean you can drive it!”
His work inspired me to experiment with my own AI method (and, of course, I sought permission from the Editor.)
I so badly want this outlook to be reframed and embraced with a proactive drive to consider all the amazing things that can be achieved from this technology.
The potential for administrative tasks to be considerably reduced, or dare I say abolished altogether, freeing-up community pharmacists to have time for a lunch break — imagine.
To have time to go out to each patient that needs that extra bit of counselling.
To have time to make meaningful, impactful engagements with the most vulnerable cohorts — the ones who are the walking definition of the inverse care law.
There is so much scope for the community pharmacist to tackle this, if given the supports required to do it.
During the intro of The Diary of A CEO with Steven Bartlett, episode from 17 March, the host does a piece about subscribing and following. It gave me pause. The effort they go to, to implore THEIR FANS to tap a button on a phone, is extraordinary.
Similarly, in the context of the current PSI elections, which are conducted via paper ballots, there is a parallel in the way participation — through voting — shapes the outcome of an institution.
Casting your vote directly impacts leadership in pharmacy and policy direction.
Less than 20 per cent of the total electorate (the number of pharmacists registered with the PSI) voted in the last PSI council election.
If you haven’t heard already, I put my hat in the ring this year, and of course, I would be thrilled to be elected, but what I would really like to see is more voters and more interest in who you are choosing as your council members.
In the absence of a reason to change, the ‘safest’ option is to not change.
The existing sector is becoming less relevant to every new cohort of pharmacists graduating and registering, and if we keep doing what we’ve always done, we will get more of the same.
If anything in this article resonates with you and you are one of the 80 per cent that didn’t vote, I urge you to consider voting this time. I can assure you that I will push for this to be the last time you have to do it via this method. This election isn’t just a formality.
The PSI Council is responsible for guiding the PSI in ensuring safe pharmacy services, patient safety, and public trust in the pharmacy profession. They decide how we work, what services we can deliver, and how much of an impact we can really have in our communities.
The PSI Corporate Strategy 2025–2028 outlines three core objectives.
Objective 1: Regulating pharmacists and pharmacies to deliver essential and expanded services safely. This is our bread and butter, our role on the frontlines. Voting for PSI Council members means selecting the voices that will represent us when it comes to guiding policy, enabling new services, and protecting our practice.
Objective 2: Evolving the regulatory approach to enhance patient safety outcomes. This isn’t just a line on a page — this is the day-to-day impact we can have if we’re supported and empowered through clear, meaningful regulation.
Objective 3: Enhancing and aligning the PSI organisation and its people to successfully achieve these strategic goals. None of these objectives can happen in a vacuum. They rely on a strong, focused Council who understand the pharmacy landscape from the ground up.
And that Council is chosen by you. This potential of the future for pharmacy is in jeopardy if pharmacists do not take part in the election process. We are the ones who decide our trajectory — our progress depends on participation.
Contrary to popular opinion (or workforce intelligence reports), I don’t believe the administrative burden itself is the problem.
The biggest culprit for delaying and affecting my work is INTERRUPTION. It’s clangs, clatters, and clashes. It’s computer screens crashing, wires fraying — nerves too, as a result.
It’s the ‘can I just ask you something’s. It’s pop-up boxes, signing in and out, ticking the box to say you are the pharmacist on-site even though I already
We need adequate communication methods and modernised equipment and technology to allow us to engage with our patients better
signed in and out, then more pop-up boxes and repetition of tasks.
Did I mention signing in and out?
It’s label reels ending mid-dispense, typos form rushing, jammed OKI printers, and ridiculous unnecessary steps like FMD scanning at the point of dispensing.
Spoiler alert: This is not because it is EU legislation, and we have no choice.
Ask a hospital pharmacist what FMD procedure they follow if you don’t believe me, or @ me on Insta and we can talk.
As I said recently at a forum on this topic, reverse FEMPI to start, and give me a €50k Annual Administration Appreciation Allocation?
Yeah, I’ll do all the administration work you want. Well, I won’t personally, of course.
What I mean to say is, I could afford an in-house administrative consultant to do it for me and remove myself and the dispensary team from any of its involvement. How do we fix it? MONEY. That is possibly the only thing *we can all agree on.
How do we get it? We generate attention. How? By getting heard. Correctly. Reaching as many people as possible using every resource available to us: Letters, magazines, emails, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, mass followings, influencers, positive controversy. This is a lot of work — if only we had access to specialised services to help with it…
In the dispensary, where possible, I streamline all calls to a WhatsApp phone to reduce incessant ringing. The landline is for the three outliers who truly do not have smartphones or the capacity to text.
An occasion arose for my retail assistant to call one of the three, and there was a pause… the coyness was tactile.
“Sorry… I have just never used one of these before and I don’t know how to use the search function.” She was referencing the old ABC vs 123 button presses.
Well. That humbled me. Wireless phones were a top-tier advancement at one point in my life.
Now we have gone further again, and we can stick an Air Pod in and operate completely hands-free. We can cancel noise! Imagine!
I am concerned that what will happen is an upgrade from wires to wireless phones with a cheer of success when, in fact, by the time that is implemented, everyone else has their AirPods in.
We need adequate communication methods and modernised equipment and technology to allow us to engage with our patients better. It would be encouraging
to see the people in leadership embracing these tools, allowing their teams to prepare for the pending influx of pharmacists registering soon.
I want to see ourselves as a unified,
forward-thinking, and passionate workforce. I want to see technology leveraged correctly to ensure time is freed- up for more meaningful work.
I want to see pharmacists no longer bogged down by unnecessary admin, instead focusing on patient care and innovation.
AI is here, whether it is welcome or not, and it must be incorporated into the aims of the PSI strategy 2025-2028 for it to be executed properly. It will serve to benefit everyone and, most importantly, the patients.
To use the phrase ‘happy wife, happy life’, consider pharmacists the wives and patients the lives.
And that’s what it’s all about. Our patients (and ironically, our patience).
*We – that’s an article for another day.
In the interest of transparency, this article was produced with the use of several different AI tools. To name a few, the Copilot feature on Microsoft Word and ChatGPT. I look forward to this being a given, like announcing you used excel to populate data or the spell-check feature for an essay submission. I used an AI dictator tool to transcribe and format the transcript from the podcast intro I mentioned above and asked ChatGPT to draft a paragraph that considers the message of this man’s speech with reference to the current PSI elections being paper ballots.
Áine is a Superintendent Pharmacist and pharmacy owner with over 18 years of experience working in community pharmacies across Ireland. In 2014, she earned her Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) degree in the UK. Her career journey has encompassed a variety of roles, including locum, support, and supervising, culminating in her recent transition to pharmacy ownership. She is deeply committed to upholding the integrity and vital role of community pharmacy in Ireland, combining her extensive experience with a passion for patient care and professional excellence.
