The profession was ready, willing and raring to go. So said the President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (Mrs Christine Glover), commenting on the news last week that the pharmacy strategy document for community pharmacy was now on the Minister for Health's desk (PJ, October 2, p513). Speaking at a Council dinner on October 6, Mrs Glover said that the profession was capable of playing a fuller role in the National Health Service.
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The President: pharmacy can play a fuller role in the NHS |
Mrs Glover also urged the government to find resources to allow introduction of the concept of medicines management. She said: "Medicines management means promoting effective and cost-effective patient care through the introduction of support for prescribers, other professionals and patients alike. [It] could bring so many benefits to the NHS and to patients . . . and pharmacists are the ones to deliver it." She added that pharmacists had a major contribution to make in medicines management within mental health services.
Referring to a forum on team working in primary care set up by medical, nursing and pharmaceutical bodies, including the Society, the President reported that Dame Deirdre Hine (president elect of the Royal Society of Medicine) had agreed to take the chair. The forum had met for the first time the previous day. It would make proposals by which national organisations representing primary care professionals could promote working together. Other bodies involved included the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Nursing and the National Pharmaceutical Association.
Commenting on the new processes being established to make decisions about what medicines the NHS would fund, the President said that the Society welcomed them, but it was vital that they should not stifle innovation or deter research. She said: "The medicines revolution is with us and there are breathtaking discoveries to be made that will change our lives. Let us ensure that the UK is in a position to be at the leading edge of invention."
Defending controlled entry into NHS contract for pharmaceutical services, the President said that the public was well served by it. She went on: "These regulations . . . protect the pharmacy network in places where it might otherwise be unattractive or unviable to open a pharmacy. They also allow local health authorities to decide when a local community needs pharmaceutical services. With the advent of even more localised provision of primary care, there is an even more compelling need to plan local pharmacy services as an integral part of primary care and not just leave it to market forces."
Referring to the current "workforce shortage", the President said that it was beginning to bite in the community sector and adversely affecting service provision in hospitals. "As a Society, we are committed to tracking more actively the trends and issues that will affect workforce levels. We will need the support of many partners to help turn this worrying problem around."
Anyone hoping for news of the promised community pharmacy strategy when the Minister for Health (Mr John Denham) spoke at the Council dinner on October 6 was doubly disappointed. First, Mr Denham was unable to be present for personal reasons (his speech was read for him by Mrs Jeannette Howe, the acting chief pharmacist), and secondly, the Minister had nothing to say about the strategy in any case. He confined himself to saying that the Government was determined to build on pharmacists' potential in the forthcoming community pharmacy strategy document.
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John Denham: determined to build on pharmacists' potential |
Referring to life long learning, Mr Denham said that, in health care, they needed to get to the position where it was not only undesirable but unthinkable that professional practice could be divorced from continuing professional development.
He went on: " I know that you are already showing the way forward in pharmacy with your plans for a structured continuing professional development scheme. I applaud you for that."
Mr Denham also had praise for hospital pharmacists. He said that there was much innovation, like influential work in Nottingham on giving in-patients more control over their medicines and work in Derbyshire and Leeds to target pharmacists' intervention on the admissions and discharge process, where they were likely to add most value. It was no surprise, therefore, that hospital chief pharmacists were playing a leading role in multidisciplinary clinical governance teams. Nor was it surprising that trust chief pharmacists had been asked to co-ordinate their hospitals' actions on antibiotic prescribing.
Noting that hospital pharmacists had been in the forefront of efforts to make prescribing more rational, Mr Denham said: "We are building on what pharmacists have been achieving by piloting a new framework for hospitals medicines management."
On primary care, Mr Denham said that they were seeing the development of a new cadre of pharmacists for whom supply was no longer central. Their focus was on getting the most for patients, for the NHS and for the country out of medicines.