The Characters
Riverdale Primary Care Organisation
Mr Greysuit
Mr Greysuit has recently been appointed as Chief Executive to the PCO. He is Dr Whitecoat’s line manager. He is an ambitious career manager with extensive NHS experience. He joined the NHS as a clerk working in hospital management and then worked as a practice manager in a GP surgery before managing a medium-sized hospital and then becoming a Director in the PCO. He is a hands-on manager who is accused of being too involved in all the management decisions across his PCO. His dislike for the power of professionals has mellowed somewhat but he still considers them poor when it comes to management skills.
Dr Whitecoat
Dr Whitecoat is the PCO pharmacy manager. She is a very capable and well-qualified clinical pharmacist with 10 years experience working in a large teaching hospital. She has been in her post of pharmacy manager to the PCO for a couple of years. Her role includes prescribing advice and responsibility for the professional and legal aspects of the community pharmacy contractors working in the area. She employs a full time prescribing adviser and six Community Pharmacists on a sessional basis for prescribjng work. She is hard working and conscientious but is much more comfortable with pharmaceutical and clinical issues than issues that involve management.
Mr Silver
Mr Silver represents the community pharmacists in the PCO. He is responsible for negotiating with the PCO – mainly through Dr Whitecoat – for additional community pharmacy services. He is in his mid 40s and owns, in partnership with his brother, five community pharmacy contracts. He is personable and flamboyant if not too impressed by his financial success and is sadly oblivious to his poor management skills. He has little knowledge of the PCO and how it works and seems uninterested to learn. He has lots of ideas but very little knowledge of how they may be implemented in practice.
Peter Pill
Peter was appointed as a Community Pharmacy manager in a branch of a large multiple a couple of years ago. He does some sessional work for the PCO by carrying out Medicines Management activities in a GP practice. He is a very capable pharmacist and, although he enjoys his job, he has been thinking about the direction he wants his career to take in the future. The idea of developing his clinical skills appeals to him and he is excited about the prospect of becoming a future independent prescriber.
Metropolis NHS Trust
Clive Black
Clive Black is the Chief Executive of the Metropolis Trust. Clive is in his early 50s with a background in management in the private sector before entering the NHS about ten years ago. He has a high profile taking every opportunity to engage with the media and frequently appears on local radio and TV programmes. He is a hardworking and talented manager. If he has a weakness, it because his tough negotiating approach can spill over to aggression. He normally gets what he wants but this can be at the cost of damaged relationships. Last year he had trouble with the union over pay-scales and had to concede on other issues to rebuild relationships.
Janet Donit
Following the sudden and tragic death of Ms Morphine in a Road Traffic Accident, Janet Donit applied for and was appointed as Chief Pharmacist of Metropolis NHS Trust. In her early 30s, she is one of the youngest Trust Chief Pharmacists in the country. She is passionate about pharmacy and people and builds very positive relations with her pharmacy staff and the other staff in the hospital. Janet is hard working and task orientated. She can get through a lot of work in a short time. She is informal in her approach and dislikes firm structures and frameworks which she sees as barriers to getting things done and improving patient care. She is innovative, constantly seeking and learning new ways of working.
Mohammed Mixture
Mohammed, who is 32 years old, is a pharmacist with responsibility for clinical pharmacy service on the oncology ward. He has just registered as a Supplementary Prescriber and is planning to use his skills and his prescribing rights by setting up a clinical pharmacy service for out patients who attend the oncology department.
Colette Capsule
Colette is the senior pharmacy technician who manages the day-to-day work of the main hospital pharmacy and ten technicians. She works hard and is a good team player who is liked by her staff. She has strong views on the future role of technicians and this has led to disagreements on professional matters with some pharmacists.