Pharmacists needed to embrace change in order to succeed in the future, Mr ALLEN TWEEDIE (Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee) told the Yorkshire regional conference.
"If we don't change we have got some real problems up ahead," he said. "Other professions . . . are looking to the future with new markets for their services; they are looking for new jobs.". The two main areas that pharmacists needed to get involved in were research into non-compliance - which was the issue seen as most pressing by the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry - and assessment of prescriptions.
In order to reposition themselves as an integral part of the primary care team, pharmacists needed to think about how the profession was planning the future and about the whole culture of where they believed they ought to be. He added that new structures for engagement with the medical profession needed to be put in place. The response from doctors had been largely positive, with health authorities and primary care groups in northern regions actively seeking pharmacist involvement, but there did seem to be noticeable discrepancies in different parts of Britain.
"We need to think about how we would organise ourselves in the pharmacy, what the technician's role will be, how much work we need to pass on and how much we can let go," he said.
Another point for consideration, in Mr Tweedie's opinion, was what the leadership of the profession was doing and how the different bodies could collaborate more effectively. "We have really too many leadership bodies in pharmacy and it does not make things easy," he said.
Mr Tweedie went on to say that if and when the service was to be taken forward it needed to be properly remunerated - a point, he assured the audience, that had been made very bluntly to the Secretary of State for Health, Mr Alan Milburn.
Mr Tweedie was pleased that the PSNC's medicines management project had progressed from the conceptional stage to the operational stage. A submission was now with the Department of Health. Trials for the project, which had a budget of £1.8m were expected to start across England in the autumn. The three universities short-listed for the trial were Aberdeen (in partnership with Keele), Nottingham and Sunderland (in partnership with the medical school at the University of Newcastle).
Mr Tweedie finished by saying: "We really must learn to manage the future and we can only do that by properly analysing the present. We have not been too good at that but we need to get our heads together and do our homework".