The Launch of the Pharmacists' Defence Association

Today, the vast majority of pharmacists working in the community are employees or locums and yet the entire community pharmacy environment is controlled by a small number of employers and employer organisations. At the same time, the practicing environment that individual pharmacists are working is becoming increasingly hostile. This is no longer an acceptable situation and this imbalance needs to be redressed.

Said Mr Koziol at the launch.

Heralding the launch, the PDA has commissioned a survey of 25,000 pharmacists which explores issues to do with workload, restbreaks, and availability of support staff and whether pharmacists feel that these issues are linked to patient safety,

Commenting on the PDA research agenda, John Murphy, the General Manager of PDA said ;

What is needed is a thorough large scale analysis to identify the key problem areas and their extent. A better understanding of the issues will help the profession to decide what action needs to be taken. This initial research exercise will only be the start of what will be an ongoing research programme for PDA as it will be important for our work to be evidence based.

This research exercise is being supervised by Alan Nathan and the results will be analysed by MEL Research in Birmingham.