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Our readers get in touch with Independent Community Pharmacist magazine to get things off their chest...

This is the most difficult period I’ve experienced in over 45 years as a contractor

Changing the format of pharmaceutical services depends on the locality of your pharmacy. Over 95 per cent of our income and turnover is from NHS prescriptions (an average of 7,700 items a month).

We have been nationalised via the back door by the government’s policies where the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization has crashed and it’s very difficult to obtain finance from the banks.

Also, our wages exceed our income! And various cuts made by the government over the years have dissolved the profit margins required to meet the costs. This is the most difficult period I’ve experienced in over 45 years as a contractor.

We are an NHS pharmacy and do not have the resources for private dispensing. Automation is the solution but that comes with very heavy investment costs which pharmacies cannot sustain at present due to losses over the last few years.

Renumeration needs looking at and we need new ways for paying the actual costs of drugs and we must take commodity dealers out of the market. Drug tariff prices must be realistic. Solve drug shortages!

Another cross is the 10-year NHS plan, which has no current direction for neighbourhood health centres and no clarity on what impact this will have on the community pharmacies.

Chiman Patel, director and superintendent pharmacist at Sykes Chemists Ltd.

GPs remain unclear about scope of Pharmacy First PGDs

GPs remain unclear about the scope of our Pharmacy First patient group directions and the clinical pathways, for example, referral for a patient with flank pain with a UTI.

It leads to frustration for both us and GPs and ultimately, this affects the patient if we cannot treat them.

Rifat Asghar-Hussain, superintendent pharmacist, Evergreen Pharmacy (Midlands) Ltd, Birmingham.

Every pharmacy is out of stock in flu vaccines for miles around

I can’t get a private flu vaccine for love nor money in the East Sussex/Kent border. Every pharmacy is out of stock for miles around.

I also struggled to find a vaccine for my NHS-eligible child who didn’t have it at school, as the community centre slots were getting booked up immediately they became available (so said the person working there when I called them).

So, there are definitely adults like me who would like to get vaccinated but can’t due to shortages.

Alice Courtney, patient.