The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is in transition, which is not a particularly comfortable state in which to be. The Pharmacy in a New Age process has led to new ways of working for the Council and new ways of working for the staff. It has also led to new spending aspirations to compete with established areas of activity.
There is nothing surprising about any of that. However, the Council has yet to settle down in its new strategic role, the staff is not yet fully comfortable within the new directorate structure and fresh revenue streams have yet to be found to finance expansion of activity.
Under the circumstances, signs of discord, such as the disagreement seen at the August Council meeting about the state of the Society's finances (PJ, August 12, p229) are inevitable. And the need for the President to publish an open letter to members offering words of reassurance (PJ, August 26, p292) is perfectly understandable.
The President's letter, while appropriately reassuring, did not seek to hide the fact that hard choices have to be made. The Society, the President said, faced difficult decisions as policy initiatives competed for finite resources. It is, of course, not just new activity that is competing for resources, but established activity, too. Among the decisions to be made will be how much of the existing activity and infrastructure should be cut or curtailed in order to free resources for new activity. And, in that context, an important consideration will be how much an existing activity can be cut without causing it irreparable damage.
That is the real tension within the Society today - between those intent on driving forward new areas of spending at all costs and those who have built up existing and worthwhile activities and want to see them maintained. The tension has yet to be resolved and no one should pretend that it will be easy to do so. Much depends on the ability to reach appropriate compromises and the willingness to restrain ambition.
In the meantime, we are beginning to hear calls for such matters to be discussed and resolved behind closed doors. In The Journal's view, members must be aware of what is going on. It is better that the members share in the decision making than that they are presented with the decisions once made. After all, it is their future and their priorities that are being debated. The Society is its members.
Paying for new activity is a perennial problem within the Society. There are essentially only two revenue streams: profits from publications and members' and premises retention fees. The former are volatile and influenced by market conditions and the latter are constrained by Government pressure.
Just as important as defining new areas of activity is defining how they should be paid for. Perhaps the time has come for a formal review of the financing of the Society's activities to be set in train. It is a matter deserving of independent study, in our view.
This is my last leading article as editor of The Pharmaceutical Journal. I wish the profession well in resolving the difficulties outlined above and in meeting the other challenges that it will face in the future.-DS.