Ontario College of Pharmacists

Really tired of hearing about how overworked pharmacists are and nobody cares ... No brain power is needed to figure out that it is number one reason for dangerous mistakes. Imagine, a plane with 50 extra passengers on board goes down and crashes ( because the pilot was ordered to squeeze in 50 extra for the airline to make more money, and he does it, otherwise he lose his job with the company). Such story will make headlines! People would be outraged and horrified. The government agency responsible for air safety would step in and would rip to shreds the airline that allowed such a safety violation. Everything would be done fast and effectively to prevent such outrageous criminal acts. Here is a great analogy about the Ontario College of Pharmacists. If, due to the pressure of Big Wigs in Head Offices to generate more money, a pharmacist "takes on board" twice or three times more patients that he safely can manage , and that overloaded "pharmacy-plane" crashes , and the crash results in many deaths and injuries, the College of Pharmacists has no power to go after the "airline"==Chains Head-offices , which force the pharmacist (pilot) "overload" his plane. Only the pharmacist's actions will be addressed in a punitive way by the College. A typical College's remark to the pharmacist in such a situation: " "Everyone can appreciate how busy pharmacies can be , but nevertheless the onus is on the PHARMACIST, nobody else, to assure the patients' safety". Now let's say, the Government Air Safety department would make the pilot --and not the airline--fully responsible for the death of the passengers of the overloaded plane. The sanity of the Air Safety department would be questioned! The next step the OCP takes makes even more "sense": they invest lots of financial resources to determine what injuries caused the deaths of the "plane passengers"=patients, and the OCP also would calculate the percentage of different types of traumas in survivors. This data will be made public , plus all the pharmacists (=pilots) will be expected to LEARN from this "helpful" data how to make their NEXT flights under the SAME circumstances( with extra 50 passengers on board) totally safe! The study results in this scenario will be "incredibly" helpful! And theOCP will KNOW and be OK with the fact that all the future flights will STILL have many more passengers than the plane can accommodate (which will result in a heavier weight of the plane, many passengers unfastened with safety belts, just standing in the aisle , their extra luggage flying all over the cabin because of limited space in overhead compartments). The OCP would tell the pilot to use some unknown magic tricks and defy the laws of nature and assure the safe landing of the plane. If asked why the College's inspectors would not initiate any action with the Pharmacies Head Offices pushing for unsafe conditions, the College would answer that their very convenient! mandate is to keep only the pharmacists in line. End of the story. And the best part is here: the OCP will post signs inside the "plane cabin" addressing the "passengers" (patients) to report the "pilots" (pharmacists) to the College if the quality of the pharmacist's work is substandard. Bravissimo! How is it not criminal to trick the public like that just to keep their pointless jobs .

In a nutshell , OCP is very unethical and dysfunctional. Their main issue is that they give the public a very false sense of security. Lots of serious safety issues are enumerated in earlier comments. On one hand, the College proclaims that their mandate and objective is to protect the public. On the other hand, if root causes of chronic and dangerous safety issues are brought to the Colleges attention, their answer is that the College has no JURIDICTION to address or try to correct the most prevalent safety problems which lead to morbidity and mortality of patients on a regular basis. 1)The College has no JURIDICTION in demanding the head offices of chain pharmacies to provide proper pharmacists/technicians ratio per the number of prescriptions to prevent multitude of mistakes that happen due to distractions and breach of concentration. 2) The College has no JURIDICTION in making it obligatory to allow only officially trained technicians on the job 3) The College has no JURIDICTION in preventing the chains from hiring people off the street (with no pharmaceutical education ) to perform the functions of technicians from day one by learning on the job while they are prone to make many dangerous mistakes. The pharmacists realistically are not capable of doing multiple tasks and supervising many staff members at the same time. So newly hired technicians might mix wrong ingredients ( as an example) 4) The College has no JURIDICTION to assure that the chains do not violate the labor law about proper 15-minutes breaks and lunch breaks. It is common for pharmacists to work for eight ---12 hours non-stop. What does it lead to? Of course, many more mistakes! 5) The College has no JURIDICTION to forbid pharmacies headoffices to order pharmacists to shorten their critical functions time for proper consultations and proper interaction checks for their patients, because the headoffices put production before the patients needs. And if a certain pharmacist will rebel against these practices, he will get fired 6) The OCP has no JURIDICTION in preventing the headoffices to force the pharmacists to semi-falsify the process of med checks 7) The OCP also claims that they have no JURIDICTION over assuring that labor conditions of pharmacists are minimally reasonable so that the pharmacists are not exhausted and thus prone to ovrerlook many mistakes 8) The OCP has no JURIDICTION to stop store managers ( many of whom are former high-school drop-outs who started their carriers as bag-boys at the cash) to demand from pharmacists to push overthecounter supplements which , in his professional judgement , the pharmacist might consider toxic So how is it possible then for the College of pharmacists to promote themselves as " Public Protectors" if they have no power or JURIDICTION to control ANY major aspect of safety at all? They basically have as much power in this respect as any random drunk in the gutter. They shamelessly mislead the public. The patients of Ontario do DESERVE to know the real situation so that they themselves can take necessary precautions, given the pathetic situation. Misleading and false statements on the part of the College are extremely unethical. The dangerous part is not that the OCP is feeding the public lies, but because it is feeding the public half-truths ( because of the College's semi-effective way to deal with NO-SAFETY related issues). And it seriously confuses the public. Dear patients --- your safety is not taken as seriously as it should be. Yes, basically all pharmacists are very knowledgeable, caring and conscientious. However, the best of them when working in overwhelmed fatigued state in understaffed pharmacy, can make serious mistakes over and over again. The OCP might reprimand them, suspend their licenses , send them to continuous education courses just to mislead the public and create an illusion that "they are addressing the situation". Even a child understands that such measures taken by the College are laughable , ineffective, unjust & meant to divert attention from root causes.

Very gloooooomy picture. All burnt-out abused Ontario Pharmacists should start reporting THEMSELVES to their College. Just LIKE the Quebec NURSES are doing it now. A Very similar picture. If a pharmacist fails to be a machine to meet the unrealistic "Care Standards" created by your College, then confront your useless College with it! I do not think that in this case, if you all do it, the College would turn the tables around. It would not be able to scapegoat each of you for show purposes. Scary to read that ' they are there to protect, but do not have legal rights to protect the public from something that really counts. :((((((((((. How such lies are helping us? Just several weeks ago my pharmacist got a mini-stroke on the job from trying to do the impossible load.

The College fails to make any significant difference for Patients' Safety. They barely offer any protection for what truly counts: life and health! They busy themselves with non-safety related projects. For ex.They are there to investigate ODB frauds (even though ODB does it independently); they discipline pharmacists for taking rebates and impose on them high fines that will end up in College's coffers --- how sleek!) , they protect patients from, for example, sexual remarks made to them by pharmacists ( granted, it is bad behavior, but does NOT result any scary rate of morbidity and mortality ). The College , for ex.,can punish pharmacists for divulging patients' clinical info to someone who does not belong to the patient's circle of care. Yes, privacy breech is bad, but NOT deadly either. (even though, ironically, the pharmacists working in community pharmacies with drive-troughs windows counsel patients on new prescriptions holding microphones in their hands, and the rest of the patients sitting in their cars behind can easily overhear it.) Plus, lots of random clerks and store managers walk inside pharmacies several times a day and can easily see lots of private info. Is the pharmacist on duty expected to wrestle them??? But!!!!!!!! In crazily busy understaffed pharmacies with poorly trained assistants ( where many pharmacists' brains are cooked and clouded by fatigue, and where certain pharmacy employees resort to illegal self-medicating to fight the stress and exhaustion ), guess, what happens? Tons and tons of mistakes ! Many of them result in serious symptoms, ailments and even deaths. Any pharmacist is a human being, and not a robot. He or she can be very kind, responsible, most knowledgeable, most up to date on clinical knowledge professional, straight A pharmacist etc, but! Such a pharmacist can easily fail OVER and OVER again , for ex, to make a simple math calculation of concentration when he is forced to do 7 tasks at a time, & simultaneously answer many questions and phone call and supervise the frustrated and often incompetent staff. So, sadly, in present situation it does not matter if the pharmacist has 3 PhDs. Things will fall through cracks big time anyway. Yes, we have data from Institute of Safety as to what type of mistakes are most common in Ontario pharmacies and what was done wrong and overlooked in each case the error happened. Sounds like a great thing, right? But in current state of things, this info is not crucial to increase the patients safety at all!! After this type of studies are done, the pharmacists will still continue working in inhuman conditions . Thus? The same errors will still continue happening if pharmacists are placed in abusive environment with labor regulations of 17th century and with the real power and rules coming from Sales Management. OCP is just pulling wool over the naive public eyes imitating "hard work" to protect the public, while they are just trying to justify their existence and keep their jobs. The issue of the labour conditions were brought to the OCP attention MANYtimes for YEARS! They ignored it , citing their favorite "no juridiction" excuse. Then you cannot claim that OCP is there to protect public. It's a phony claim. It was suggested to the OCP employees (pharmacists) to come at least for one 8-12 hours shift to a typical community chain pharmacy and make a training video for the real life pharmacists how to successfully do everything 100% per College's guidelines act policies to demonstrate how they will provide a thorough care to all patients during the shift. It was also suggested that the College's lawyers should follow the trainers and assure that everything is done per the OCP standards. NOBODY volunteered for this video. Because they know that all they do is just "skillfully go through motions" faking their activity to "increase" the Patients Safety, but in real harsh pharmacy environment they themselves would fail to do what they require from others. They pretend not to see the Elephant in the Room. Very unethical

I filed a complain with the committee for being treated unfairly and because I was subjected to misconduct by a pharmacist who is a member of this organization and is licensed to practice in this province. Following six months of waiting and many documents and emails back and forth. The ruling was a joke the committee did not even read and understand my complaint. The narrative they used in their ruling shows a predigest condescending attitude. It was a total waste of time. The mater was very simple and would have resulted in taking action against the member if considered under any law. Their action may encourages human rights infringements and violations.

I made a complaint more than two years now, the process is taking too long. There is a huge different between fraud and sexual assault, cases should be prioritized. Some advice: 1. Criminal background check on all applicant 2. Sexual harassment training before the pharmacists graduate 3. If allegations were made the pharmacist will be immediately suspend until the hearing 4. Equality. If the pharmacist has a lawyer the Collage should provided the victim too with a lawyer 5. The victim will be separated from his/her abuser while testify 6. In the jury must be at list one person who is professional expert on sexual assault cases 7. If the pharmacist found not guilty the Collage still keep record of the incident for future references Sexual assault destroy victims life and the pharmacists living his life like nothing happened ! If you are victim I know what you are going through every day.

OCP serves neither pharmacists nor patients. This body only serves itself. This out-of-control bureaucracy needs to be abolished and replaced by a government body that has financial and regulatory oversight. It would serve the interests of the patients and pharmacists better. The profession of pharmacy was supposed to be "self-regulated", the only thing that's self-regulated is the College, which means it has no oversight in financial, policy, or other matters. The College solely serves its own interests which are cushy jobs, nice pensions, 6-8 weeks paid time off during the year, and many more lavish employee benefits to count. That's why, it is a very coveted employer. It lives off money from pharmacists who have to work in the front lines with sick demanding patients under unbearable conditions and limited resources. It must be really nice for the College not to have to worry about a financial bottom line and always increase its budget. What choice do pharmacists have? Not pay and lose their livelihood? The College loves the sham "self-regulation" status because it can continue robbing pharmacists of their money, dignity and livelihood. The College shames pharmacists convicted in its kangaroo system of justice not because it's the right thing to do but because it's in the self-interest of the College to keep its gravy train without any oversight.

worst college in Canada for its own members.very slow and frustrating to deal with them.they don't care as they know registrant can not do anything about it.i have applied for transfer my registration to ontario since start of this year and I m still waiting.whenever I called to inquire they gave me same answer 'we are busy and someone will contact you when they have time to review your application. most of the operators are not pleasant to talk with.i lost my job due to college not able to process my application on time.i am jobless past 3 months.i am also going to send emails to ministry as well go public as this attitude needs to be change.