Pharmacy Manager needed for Midlands

 

 

Pharmacy Manager needed for Midlands!

 

 

At Jackie Brown Medical, we are looking for a Pharmacy Manager for a Pharmacy in WestMeath.

The Job:

This Pharmacy Manager must be a strong leader who can work on their own initiative. This person will need to have the ability to:

• manage staff,
• organise rotas,
• drive business sales and marketing
• stock control

Systems used at this Pharmacy are McLerons MPS and Touchstore EPOS so a familiarity with these would be a distinct advantage.

 

This Pharmacy Manager will:

• Do their own rota based on a 40 hour week
• Have Pharmacy Manager experience in Ireland
• Fluent written and spoken English is essential

 

For further information on this position or to apply, please goto:

 

http://www.jackiebrownmedical.ie/jobs_ireland.php?url=jobs&page=2

It’s been a while since I posted and now the recession is in full swing.  Indeed, other countries are talking about the recession bottoming out and the first signs of recovery.  It certainly doesn’t look that positive for us in Ireland at the moment.

NAMA remains a bone of contention and there is no obvious clear policy for a comprehensive plan to get us out of the mess we are in.  Indeed, it looks like we are facing a winter of public service strikes.

There is some positive movement though.  The initial recession panic seems to have alleviated to some extent.  While we are still seeing some redundancies in the medical sector, the rate of job losses has decreased.

Pharmacies are still reeling from the double hit they have taken.  There is little to no movement in the Pharmacist jobs market.  Our advice to pharmacists is “If you are working stay put”.  There were pharmacy closures over the last year and profit margins have been squeezed.  Salaries for new hires have similarly been affected.  The days of six figure salaries are largely over for now.  We have gone from a situation where pharmacists were in demand and could obtain nearly any salary they desired, to one where is an oversupply of pharmacists for very few jobs indeed.  We do not expect a change in this situation for another 12 months.

Nurses are finding themselves under increasing pressure, not immune to the bitter bite of the recession either.  Staff are not being replaced, Agency nurses are finding that there are fewer shifts available and conditions are not as good as they were (I can hear the comments already).  Many nurses are looking further afield with Nursing jobs in Australia enjoying a larger than normal interest.  Given that as a rule we export a lot of our nurses in good times it is perhaps not surprising.

The pharmaceuticals industry has also undergone some restructuring.  The Pfizer Wyeth deal has not had the negative effect that many in the industry in Ireland feared. We have seen large scale job cuts in manufacturing though, with several companies announcing redundancies.

Medical Sales Reps have been having a mixed time on the jobs market.  There have been redundancies, but there are still jobs available.  The people worst hit by the recession in Medical Sales are the people who are trying to break into Medical Sales.  A sudden glut of experienced Medical Sales reps on the market has left the hopeful rookies with little hope in a market that was always a relatively difficult one to breach.

We are still importing medical professionals to Ireland for positions that we just do not have enough people in the Irish pool for.  These tend to be specialist positions across the board.

Allied Health workers may as well get a job in the local chipper for the time being.  Despite there being a desperate need for Speech and Language Therapists, Physiotherapists and Social Workers, the budgets are just not there to hire them.  We are faced with a culture of marginalisation, where special needs requirements have been firmly shelved.

Health Care Assistants are having a rough ride too, as are any professions where there are an excess of people qualified for the position.  The Fetac qualification is fast becoming an absolute necessity.  Competition is fierce and agency shifts are ever thinner on the ground.  The best route to finding a permanent position remains in building contacts in individual hospitals and nursing homes while doing agency work.

Recruitment Agencies are reporting an upturn in the numbers of jobs available.  In the Medical Recruitment Market in particular there has been clear signs of improvement.

Want an update on another sector? Leave a comment.

Horray for Pharmacists!

We had recently noticed a surge of activity in Pharmacy Recruitment and this is one of the reasons why -

From 1st November 2008, the HSE will restore the mark-up it pays to Pharmacists from 8% to the previous rate of 17.66%. On September 11th the High Court found that the HSE was in breach of its contract with Pharmacists when it decided to reduce payments for the provision of drugs and services under the medical card scheme. The HSE was orded to pay the costs in the case. In response to the court ruling and in a major climb-down, the HSE announce on the 14th October that it had decided to restore the original mark-up arrangements from the beginning of November.

“In compliance with a recent High Court judgement, the wholesale mark-up the HSE pays to pharmacies for medicines supplied through the various medical card schmes will be increased on November 1st from 8 per cent to 17.66%”, it said.

The recent economic downturn hit early and hard for Pharmacists.  The HSE decision to reduce drug payments had a massive effect on Pharmacist Jobs.  It is only now, months later, that we are beginning to see the first signs of a recovery in the Pharmacy jobs market.

The news is not all good for Pharmacists though.  Salaries on offer are now roughly 10% less than they were before.

From a recruitment perspective we saw some recruitment agencies that had specialised in Pharmacist jobs in serious trouble for a while.

The Pharmacist jobs that are trickling onto the market at the moment tend to be senior positions.  Supervising Pharmacists have to be replaced when they leave their jobs.  We have also seen hospital Pharmacist positions poke their head over the HSE barricades to bring in new Pharmacists.

The private Hospital Pharmacist market, unhampered by HSE restrictions has seen Pharmacist Jobs created, but not in the numbers that would signal a full return to a healthy jobs market.

The market has not yet recovered for Pharmacy Technicians, but Pharmacy technicians were hardest hit with job losses and it would be expected that their recovery would be slowest.

Locum Pharmacist jobs suffered a bit of a blip, but it is now a good time to be working as a locum.  Pharmacy bosses are still holding back on hiring full time Pharmacists until the dust has settled further.  This gives rise to more Locum Pharmacist jobs becoming available as owners are slow to replace full time staff at present.

Given the scaremongering that took place immediately after the HSE announcements, the outlook at the moment is not at all bad! Medical Jobs in general are having a hard time, but much better than other industries.  I’d far rather be a Pharmacist right now than a construction worker!