Like many antibiotic pharmacists, I work with a lot with the Dipsy. Sorry, not the Dipsy - the Green teletubby with the top hat; but our DIPC (which is pronounced dipsy) who is the Director of Infection Prevention and Control. A DIPC is the person at each hospital that carries the can for C. diff's and MRSA's, as well as ensuring the hospital can deal with a hundred other infectious disease problems that the tabloid press hasn't yet picked up on.
But it's good that we can call him a Dipsy. It trips off the tongue, it's memorable and it's a concise acronym of his role.
Similarly in community there are now Gypsies. Sorry, my spelling's gone again - I mean GPwSI-es (which is pronounced Gypsies). General Practitioners that have a special interest in a specific area. The idea being that, rather than refer patients to a consultant in a hospital twenty miles away, GPs can refer to another GP across town that knows more about this area and thus can deal with intermediate cases locally.
The first time I heard the term GPwSI's I thought I was hearing about Gipsy clinics. But no, it was a case of providing health care to that highly mobile population, it was about one GP dealing with the complicated dermatology patients whose management the other twenty GPs in that town felt was outside their competence. Again, it's a nice acronym.
One development in English Community pharmacy is the advent of Pharmacists with a special interest (PhwSI's). Like their GP counterpart, these are practitioners who still do the normal day-to-day work of a community pharmacist (the generalist role), but on top of that some of their week is dedicated to the management of cases who needs the skills of an advanced pharmacist practitioner (a specialist role).
Back when I was a student pharmacist, the only place you could be promoted to in community pharmacy was into management, and so out of patient contact; so it's great to have an official way of having an advanced, yet still patient facing, community pharmacy role that is potentially available for all community pharmacists.
Unofficially we've had a pharmacist not far from here who's been doing this kind of role for years. Those in the know, know there's a pharmacist who has extensive experience and expertise in the fitting of trusses. This is a skill that is no longer in the general remit of a community pharmacy as, due to advances in hernia surgery, trusses have been relegated to the history books for all but a few unfortunate patients. We've now also got official pharmacists-with-a-special-interest in the local area, managing warfarin patients across a few towns near Haworth.
But the big question I have is - how do we pronounce the abbreviated form of a Pharmacist with a Special Interest for use in everyday parlance?
Fizzies? Fuzzies? Ph-wy-size? I can't think of anything that has the same simple elegance as the name of a teletubby.
21-9-8
