Response To: ‘Regrading Not Helpful’
ALLOW me space to respond to a letter in your newspaper dated 22 March 2013 by trying to answer some of the questions the writer raised.
The pharmaceutical profession is divided into the following cadres: pharmacy assistant, pharmacist technician, pharmacy technologist, pharmacist intern and pharmacist, in increasing order of educational requirements, training, skills and responsibilities.
Although the roles of these professionals overlap in some areas, they vary significantly as a whole. Apart from the number of years required to train a pharmacist (four to five years depending on where one studied and obtained an honours degree) and a pharmacist’s assistant (two years and obtained a certificate), there is also a difference in how these professionals are trained. Pharmacist’s assistants are trained at operational level whereas pharmacists are trained at managerial level. Pharmacist’s assistant students spend most of their time in hospitals or health facilities being trained how to do the job (on-the-job training) whereas pharmacy students spend most of their time at university acquiring in-depth knowledge on subject content as well as in the laboratory for practical purposes. They also acquire practical experience through internship programmes during their holidays. A typical example of the difference between the two forms of training; a pharmacist’s assistant is trained to prepare a product following instructions in a form of a formula whereas the pharmacist is trained to compile that formula in addition to preparing it and understanding the role of every ingredient in the formulation.
Namibia is currently experiencing a shortage in both professions but more in pharmacists because to date, all those qualified as pharmacists were trained outside Namibia and could therefore not meet the demand in the country. Namibia however has been training pharmacist’s assistants at the National Health Training Centre in Windhoek hence there are more pharmacist’s assistants than pharmacists.
Legally all pharmacies should be managed by a pharmacist but due to the shortage of these professionals, there are a number of public health facilities that are run by pharmacist’s assistants. The overall activities of these facilities are however still supervised by regional pharmacists in the form of regular visits and assist the pharmacist’s assistant with orders, reports and other activities. Where there are pharmacists and pharmacist’s assistants, the pharmacist spends more time developing pharmaceutical care plans for patients e.g. identifying and resolving medication errors, counselling and health education in addition to supervising the dispensing process. The shortage of pharmacists in the country is however expected to start declining when the first intake of the School of Medicine (Unam) graduate starting in 2014.
Pharmacists are not only found in big cities as the writer suggests, they are found all over the country although not everywhere due to the small number we have in the country. With regard to changing the title of pharmacist’s assistants to a pharmacy assistant or pharmacist technician, this is not possible because that is the qualification that they obtained and are registered as such under the Pharmacy Act of Namibia, doing this would be the equivalent to qualifying as an enrolled nurse and then asking to be referred to as a registered nurse or qualifying as a dental therapist and then asking to be referred to as a dentist.
Both professions are important in society and it is important that they are able to work together in order to deliver the best service to their patients.
EA
By email