pharmacies struggle to recruit staff

In Loison-sous-Lens (Pas-de-Calais), Eric Bot, pharmacist, leads a team of ten people in his pharmacy. But for nearly a year, he lacked a pharmacist. The position was difficult to fill. “I stayed ten months without a pharmacist (…). It was really very hard, for me it was borderline burn-out”, says Eric Bot. In Cambrai (North), another pharmacy is also looking for personal but it’s just as complicated.

Hundreds of vacancies

Two years from retirement, Jérôme Cattiaux finds himself in an unprecedented situation. “I never saw that. The big risk is that one day in rural areas (…) they lose the pharmacy because there is no one left to run it”, dreads the pharmacist. Faced with the difficulty, the offices turned to the Faculty of Pharmacy in Lille (North). But it too is now struggling to attract students to this sector. At the last start of the school year, 260 places were open in the second year, a hundred remained vacant.