PSN Ex President
president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), was one of the lead facilitators at the event. In this interview with me, he reveals salient issues encountered by pharmacists in Nigeria. Excerpts
What are the expectations and roles of hospital pharmacists?
Well, hospital pharmacists are supposed to give care and give drugs to patients that come for treatment in the hospital. But giving out drugs goes with a lot of component. When we talk about pharmaceutical care, we talk about counseling, outcomes of therapy among others.
When drug is given for instance, it is your duty as a pharmacist to follow up to know if it cured the ailment and if it didn’t, it is your duty to refer to the prescriber that the drug is not giving out the expected output.
It is a challenge to the pharmacist, physician and manufacturer; who is also a pharmacist. It is a terrain which he wants to take charge of what belongs to him and to be able to help others make good decision in prescribing; in giving medication to patients and also to ensure that the patients are using their medication properly.
Do not forget that we have situations where people get tired of taking a particular drug either because of the side effect or for other reasons. When there is no pharmacist beside such a person to encourage adherence and concordance, it is going to be a problem and the ailment might never go away.
In Nigeria, are pharmacists living up to these expectations and roles?Well, within the limits of the practice of the profession, I wouldn’t say we are on top of it but we’ve been able to carve a niche for ourselves. Again, because of the shortage of manpower, I cannot say that we are actually there- as in, where we want to be.
You’ve heard it repeated over and over here today that there is shortage in pharmaceutical manpower and we do not have enough schools to train pharmacists for it costs so much money to train them.
Pharmacists are not just like any other person. To-day, you heard about the peculiarity of their training. In our set up, when you prepare an emulsion- a cough syrup, it takes so many expensive ingredients to prepare it and you must throw it away to prepare another one but others don’t do that in their training.
So, that is a clinical problem which we’re trying to address and we are also looking at supportive staff such as pharmacy technicians to assist us in certain basic duties.
How can the public get the best of hospital pharmacists?
First of all, the public must first understand how they can reach the pharmacist.
It is compulsory that you reach the pharmacist, for instance in the community setting, we have pharmacists that specialize in community ser-vice and they have a special sign to identify where they are and it is their duty to enter such places and ask for the certificates of registration which must be displayed in such a practice and must be conspicuously displayed to the public.
The second part is that you must also go to registered places to buy you drugs and ensure that you’re given the right information about the drug.
So, by and large, we are there but we may not be enough. In the cities and some of the rural areas, you will get the presence of a pharmacist but what you might be talking about is the spread.
The spread might not be as good as we expect be-cause of the shortage of manpower but we are addressing those issues.
In Nigeria, most people working in pharmaceutical retail outlets, especially those who dispense drugs are not pharmacists. Why is this so?
Do not forget that in carrying out commercial activities, pharmacists alone cannot do the entire job so they will need supportive staffs. This is part of the dilemma of a trading profession which reveals that we can’t do it alone so require other hands to be able to achieve our goals. But when it comes to dispensing the ethical drugs, it is mandatory a pharmacist gives them out.
Do not for-get that all we do is not purely ethical drugs or poison. We have over the counter drugs which anybody could enter anywhere and buy those drugs like panadol, paracetamol; you don’t need a pharmacist to guide you on that for it is known as a house hold name thus can be picked over the counter.
But when it come to ethical drugs; drugs that have to do with ailments like hypertension, diabetes, of course, the pharmacist must be in charge. And that is why when you enter such places, you do not just have access, for it must be recommended by a physician and dispensed by the pharmacist.
It has been alleged that the PSN- Lagos chapter’s recent condemnation of the strike by doctors in Lagos state hospitals is born out of selfishness and envy of the medical doctors, as well as to curry favour from the government. How true is it?
I’m not too familiar that the state chapter did that… …yes, they did but if they did that, it may spring from their own understanding of their locality.
But we the mother body do understand and sympathize with these doctors because we work with them. But the only aspect we are worried about is that when you are on strike, the people that die, it is impossible to get them back. And sometimes, we’ve said, can we strike a balance?
Can we do more of negotiation? Can we do more of talking and lobbying to be able to achieve some level and reach an agreement and I think that is the aspect that the national body of PSN would want to buy in.
But the local branch might be faced with some challeng-es which may include that they think strike is too rampant in Lagos for we don’t know about any other place where doctors are on strike almost every other time. So, that might compel them to make such a comment.
I don’t have all the details but it could be the regularity of this strike and the fact that a lot of people die when this is on and there is need for the entire group to come together and save life.
Immediately after condemning the doctors’ action, secretary of PSN, Lagos chapter, called on the government to as well give pharmacists equal treatments as doctors.
Don’t you think the request is the motif for the condemnation of the doctors?
The doctors cannot be the bench mark for pharmacists. Pharmacy is a very distinct profession that it has a right to develop itself and ask for its own right. There is something we call job evaluation that was done during the time of Prof. Grange as minister of health and that job evaluation brought out a lot of things.
That documents revealed that immediately after the doctors, pharmacists follow because almost 99.9% of people who visit the hospital facilities end up at the pharmacy. The same applied for their workload.
So, I think if the pharmacists are asking that after the doctors they should be put at par, it is not too much. Because you find that if 300 patients visit a hospital facility, you may have just 10 pharmacists dispensing those drugs, giving advice and talking, and I think they would even deserve more than what the doctors have got.
So in that vein, they might be correct to ask for equal right; equal pay because we are talking about job evaluation- what do you do to the patient? What value do you add to the patient’s life? What value do you add to patient care which is critical? And the job evaluation conducted by a doctor minister of health showed that after the doctors, the pharmacists were there. And everybody that visits the hospital facility do not go to any other person other than a doctor and pharmacist.
So I think that they would not be farfetched in asking that they are paid just at par with the doctors. Even if it is not the same, it should be very close.
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