Pharmacies are increasingly having trouble recruiting graduate employees but also, outside the big cities, to find buyer.
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“It had become difficult in recent years but, since the Covid, it has been catastrophic.” At the Comptoir de la Pharmacie de Donzère, in Drôme, Brigitte Boyer, 68, sighs for a moment before chaining , disappointed: “In thirty years of pharmacy, I had never seen that. Formerly, we managed to recruit in a month! There, it’s been a year and a half that I am looking, without success, a deputy pharmacist.” Resigned , the pharmacist finally resolved, this summer, to close her business on Saturday afternoons. A decision taken over the same, but “necessary”, to “relieve the teams a little”, exhausted by the workload.
400 kilometers away, similar scenario in the Dijon region. “It is the same galley, notes this other pharmacist. For the first time, I saw colleagues lower the curtain during the summer holidays, failing to have found replacements to keep the pharmacy open during the holidays of their employees . “Between medical prescriptions, advice to customers and new health missions such as carrying out COVID tests and vaccination, pharmacies activity has jumped in recent years. But, after having enthusiastically welcoming the enlargement of their responsibilities, the pharmacies, faced with an increasingly glaring shortage of staff, depression.
“The recruitment difficulties have been accentuated. There are currently 15,000 preparers and pharmacists in the pharmacical network. No pharmacy is escape today to this phenomenon”, confirms Christophe Le Gall, President of the National Union of French pharmacists. Even the overseas territories are struggling. “Despite a very attractive remuneration, a thirty-five hour contract, and the management of the plane ticket and the accommodation on site, there is no one,” explains a pharmacist outside the metropolis. On the canvas, the announcements posted on recruitment sites and social networks testify to this frantic quest: “We are still looking for a pharmacist”, “We need you”, “desperate pharmacy” …
Change of mentality
Where did the pharmacists go? “As in many other professions, there have been a loss of staff, due to the COVID crisis. Pharmacists, tired by the workload, questioned themselves and deserted the profession,” says Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the Union of Unions of Frame Pharmacists, which also underlines the change of mentality of the younger generations. “Many highlight the quality of life rather than salaries, and refuse to work on weekends or on wide hourly amplitudes,” he continues. Many pharmacists also question the “mercenaries of the covid”, these pharmacists who preferred to abandon the wage of the pharmacy to chain the achievements of interim covid tests, much more lucrative.
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