The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is seeking the views of its members on ensuring the competence of pharmacy support staff, as part of a series of consultations on a new legal framework for professional regulation (PJ, March 11, p400).
Members' opinions are being sought through a four-page consultation paper published this week as a supplement to The Journal. Comments are sought by August 25.
Members are being asked for their thoughts on how best to ensure that members of staff supporting pharmacists in everyday practice are competent to discharge their responsibilities. In particular, the Society wants members' views on whether there is a need for a more robust regulatory framework for support staff and, if so, who should regulate and what form the regulation should take. The consultation relates to dispensing technicians, medicines counter assistants and all other support staff who may be involved in the provision of health care services.
The consultation exercise is being conducted by the Council's Health Act working party, which has the aim of developing proposals for a modern, dependable and effective framework in line with the expectations of the Government and the public. The working party was originally constituted as the disciplinary machinery working party, which in 1998 produced proposals for reforming the profession's 40-year-old disciplinary legislation (PJ, May 2, 1998, p622). When the Health Act 1999 gave Ministers wide powers to amend existing legislation in the field of professional regulation - including the provisions of Royal charters such as that of the Society - the Council reconstituted the working party with a remit to examine all aspects of pharmacy's professional regulation.
The new consultation paper is the third to be issued by the working party. The first, in March, asked for members' views on measures to ensure professional competence and lifelong learning. The second, in April, asked for views on the composition of the Council and the election of Council members. The working party says that it is delighted with the large number of responses to those papers. Members' views are being analysed and consolidated for use in preparing a formal consultation document for circulation at a later date, probably towards the end of the year.
The support staff paper is the last at this stage of the consultation process. The working party is now re-examining the issue of the profession's disciplinary machinery to see whether any further consultation is needed on that matter in the light of developments since the consultation before its 1998 proposals.
The support staff paper is to be made available shortly on the Society's website, at www.rpsgb.org.uk/29-hawp3.htm.