Pharmacy: What Went Right and Wrong? -------> Announcement (11pm, 28/4/07): Please visit http://andrew-lee1980.livejournal.com/

Dear Diary,

Just watched the mandarin evening news on television. There, in one of their local news… the President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Society (PSS) was interviewed. As I have known much earlier, PSS has indeed lodged a complaint to Consumer Association of Singapore (CASE) regarding private general practitioners (GPs) not displaying the costs of their medications and refusing to write prescriptions for their patients to buy the medicine from pharmacies. It is a clever move there by PSS, especially now that the GPs are constantly shooting themselves in their feet with so many reported malpractices like indiscriminate prescribing of hypnotics and even the recent “Subutex” fiasco.

I can almost feel the mounting pressure on the doctors as the PSS, at last, shows that it can stand against the presumed might of the physicians. Nonetheless, while many active members of the PSS are obviously in an upbeat mood, many more pharmacists remain apathetic to such news. I am optimistic and can see that sole dispensing rights will eventually be awarded to the pharmacists within the next 8 years. However other than raising our profiles, securing dispensing rights have little else to do with us because most of us would expectedly have left the dispensing pharmacy practice by then.

Doctors and pharmacists are members of the healthcare profession at large. However, never have healthcare subgroups have the kind of acrimony shared between these two subgroups. The dentists? They are out of the picture. Nurses are very much happy to be assistants to doctors. Dieticians, physiotherapists, therapists… they specialise in fields that mainstream medical professionals know little of and have little interest in either. Doctors and pharmacists have some great overlaps and a huge bone of contention: Pharmaceuticals.

Yet as the GPs fight this inevitably losing battle (especially when their heavyweight specialists and consultants are abandoning their cause), the pharmacy profession faces a new challenge from within. Not so much about dispensing rights but the exodus of pharmacists from practice into fields they, once upon a time, do not consider. As hospitals and community pharmacies see their pharmacists leave in batches, one should not be extremely bewildered, as pointed out by a fellow ex-classmate of mine. Pharmacists graduating from our local university are distinctively different from pharmacy schools around the world. They differ because of their mindsets. In many countries including our neighbour Malaysia, it is extremely prestigious to be a graduate with a pharmacy degree and students flocked eagerly to apply for a place in pharmacy school.

In Singapore, the scenario is very peculiar. Pick any two students from the local university and it is very likely that one of them did not choose to be a pharmacist. Many of them chose to study other courses (especially Medicine) as their first choice. It is only through failure to get into the course of their choice, did they land up in pharmacy. Theoretically, it should not have shock me that much to learn that one classmate is intending to quit an ongoing PhD in pharmacy to pursue a medical degree. Neither should I get too shocked to hear that another is splurging $270K to get an Australian medical degree. Okay, the latter was very shocking because she initially was so motivated to do a Pharm.D (Doctor of Pharmacy).

Unless the pharmacy school in Singapore starts to attract students who love practising pharmacy upon university entry, the overdue progress of societal recognition of this respected profession will continue to be hindered.

A personal thought. I speak for myself and on my platform, with no affiliation to any institution whatsoever. Thank you.

God Bless,

Andrew