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I have just finished our first flu jab clinic of the year. I have enjoyed the banter from the patients; ‘you should line us up like they used to in the army’ and other such comments. I have enjoyed the competition with the other clinicians; who can give the most in the time! Most of all I have enjoyed the essence of general practice. Seeing my patients a year on, I notice which patients are well and which ones are not moving as well, or who seem a little frailer.
So why am I writing this, having been one of the quiet GP partners trying to keep going in increasingly troubled times? I am writing this as, in their great wisdom, NHSE and PHE felt that pharmacies should get in on the flu jabs. I am sure this is appropriate to increase the uptake, but the knock-on effect of poorly thought-through plans are beginning to show.
NHSE insist that we order enough flu jabs for our at-risk population. Fine, but then the pharmacy receives their flu jabs 3 weeks before us from the producers as the retailers can place larger orders. Pharmacies in our area had a 3-week head-start on us. Our nurses must have annual immunisation update training. Do the pharmacist and technicians? We have full resuscitation equipment on site. Do pharmacies? The pharmacy has to inform us that they have given the flu jab but not the batch number or expiry date. So, if they have a reaction, which of course we will have to see, we do not have this information to report the adverse reaction. And to add insult to injury the pharmacies get paid 96p more for each flu jab.
If we make a loss this year, we will not be sacrificing our Saturday mornings that are not being used for extended access, we will not be signing the flu DES, and the losers will be the patients. I am sure too that the pharmacist will not be doing home visits to the house bound and I will lose my precious time for assessing whether my patients are ageing well or need some extra vigilance in the year to come.
Shame on the RCGP and the BMA for allowing the further disintegration of general practice. Sometimes the small things are just as important as the large issues.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2019