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As welcome as this cap may be, it frankly is too little, too late. This is a measure that should have been implemented years ago. Pharmacy has, thankfully, finally caught up with dentistry and medicine in ensuring a balance is maintained between supply and demand. If I predict correctly that the cap will be effective from the next academic year, 2013/2014, then next year's graduates have a much better chance of securing a pre-registration placement in approximately a year to eighteen months time.
But what about when they go on to qualify as newly qualified pharmacists, when they need to find secure work? This is where the main problem really exists. Right now, many pharmacists are, if they are really lucky, only able to secure occasional shifts often finding themselves heavily underemployed.
And many more are having to make serious decisions about their future. Does pharmacy even have a role in their future career and life? Its a tragedy that graduates across these islands are even asking themselves the previous question. How did it really all come to this?
This is the reality that has shocked many newly qualified pharmacists everywhere. And we are not talking about people who, in footballing terms, would only find any hope playing in the reserves side of a football team. They are not write offs. They are talented people who have been unfortunate enough to find themselves in the middle of a volatile storm.
I am no advocate of negativity. Nor do I scaremonger. But if we are really putting the worst scenario forward then it may not be until the end of this decade when real stability will resume in terms of ensuring a healthy balance is struck between the number of pharmacists available and pharmacist jobs and work. And that's if the economic crisis begins to finally properly ease for the first time since 2008.
How many people are going to really quit pharmacy as a profession after working for years to secure their degrees? How many people are going to stay in pharmacy no matter what stage they are currently at in their careers? These are not known and nobody knows how many qualified pharmacists exactly will be registered to practice in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the next few years. The job market is simply saturated. And deeply. Unless the amount of work available increases then there will be more unemployed pharmacists who will have to potentially make some life changing decisions.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are yet to implement similar measures. And as far as I am aware a similar measure does not exist in the Republic of Ireland. The other nations mentioned should implement such measures if they are to avoid worsening this employment crisis as what has unfolded in England. No country is immune from what has happened.
Just because we now have a cap on pharmacy student numbers, it doesn't mean that those who secure pre-registration placements from 2014 onwards will be guaranteed a job. Instead, they will simply have to slow down and join the long tailback on the pharmacy employment motorway.
I am a 2nd year pharmacy student and although I see the cap as a massive step in the right direction, I cant help but have reservations about the competency of the GPhC. These are the people who were meant to stop this travesty from happening, yet flagrantly allowed the opening of new pharmacy schools here there and everywhere. I look at what they have done and I try to come up with logical reasoning as to why they have done it, and then I realise: IT DEFIES LOGIC!. To put it bluntly, we are the human equivalent of donkeys and the GPhC is to blame.
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