Guild President steps down. Problems with the Pharmaceutical Industry in Australia

http://www.contactmagazine.com.au/news/latest-news/guild-president-to-step-down

Kos Sclavos, Pharmacy Guild of Australia national president resigns

My thoughts: good. The Pharmacy Guild hasn't done much to help the industry and all of us pharmacists. The industry is at its lowest point EVER and all the Guild does is negotiate useless things with the Government and it doesn't really benefit the industry.

Problems with the pharmaceutical industry at the moment:

a) Too many graduates and pharmacy schools: UTS Pharmacy in 
Sydney just opened this year. Don't know why the government even approved to that when there's already a few Masters of Pharmacy courses and Bachelor of Pharmacy courses available.

b) Too many graduates means less available jobs: I've seen interns still looking for an internship position 6 months post-graduation because there are no open internship positions available. How can those ppl undertake clinical and become registered pharmacists if they don't have an internship?

c) Newly registered pharmacists can't find full time jobs: I've also seen newly registered pharmacists being let go by their internship employer because they can't afford to take on another pharmacist.

d) Pharmacists being paid minimal wages: Pharmacists from a certain discount chemist gets paid a mere $20 per hour because they just can't a job anywhere. Even a Cityrail ticket attendant gets paid more than that! Here you go, attend uni for 4 years, attend 1 year clinical placement, and all you get in the end is some pity wage that's less than a retail shop assistant.

e) Closures of pharmacies: pharmacies going bankrupt coz they can't compete with prices of the big discount pharmacies and because Medicare's price reductions mean pharmacy owners earn less than they used to.

f) New pharmacy services that don't seem to last very long: Pharmacists were undertaking courses to become accredited and do HMRs but that seems to be going very well because its time consuming and Medicare doesn't seem to want to pay us any more due to some fraudulent claims made by a minority of pharmacists. Clinical interventions used to be a few dollars, now we're only getting 10 cents per CI because the pool of money has been exhausted. MedsCheck has just started and getting paid $60-$90 per check which is good, but lets see how long that will last before they stop paying us the incentives.

g) Supermarkets still eyeing on the pharmaceutical industry: They were stopped from opening pharmacies within supermarkets but they never stopped. In the next few years, the government will probably give in, why - so they can get more money that way. Like Americans, pharmacies will be within supermarkets and you can buy antibiotics from Woolies

h) Government puts Pharmacists onto the shortage skills workers list: that means due to stats, they say there is a shortage of pharmacists in Australia, so they open the doors for pharmacists overseas to come to Australia on a work visa and work here. Seriously, a shortage? Local students are having trouble finding a job, why are you inviting overseas pharmacists to work in an already saturated market. So stupid. Someone didn't do market research or something.

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Time to change industries and careers kiddos.