The Society

Special Council Meeting

Council moves to meet new Government regulatory agenda

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has embarked on a programme for the reform of professional discipline and the introduction of lifelong learning, so as to meet the Government’s agenda on transparency and accountability for professional self-regulation.

At a special meeting on January 10, the Society’s Council and senior staff discussed how to take forward this element of the Government’s modernisation agenda. The Council’s Health Act Working Party was asked to bring forward a range of proposals to the Council meeting on February 6 and 7.

A key feature of the discussion at the special meeting was how the Society could embrace the requirements in a modern world of public scrutiny and accountability while remaining able to fulfil its advocacy and leadership roles for the profession.

The Council was reminded that for some years it had been planning to seek reform of the Society’s disciplinary machinery, which it saw as obsolescent and inadequate for modern requirements. In 1996, the Council had convened a working party to draw up proposals for modernising the disciplinary machinery. Following consultation with the profession (PJ, May 2, 1998, p622), proposals had been sent to the Government in 1998 (PJ, August 15, 1998, p225). Proposals for lifelong learning had been raised in an issue paper drawn up in 2000 (PJ, March 11, p400).

Following the enactment of the Health Act 1999, and in the light of medical scandals such as the Harold Shipman and Bristol Royal Infirmary cases, it had become evident that there were new criteria to be taken into account. As a result, many aspects of the Society’s constitution, its remit and its ways of working needed to be reviewed. The Council had therefore empowered its Health Act Working Party, under the chairmanship of Mr Bill Darling (a past President of the Society), to take forward such issues.

The Council was informed that the Society had recently been working closely with the Department of Health to ensure that the profession developed in line with the Government’s intentions. Key among these issues was an increase in lay involvement in functions and organisations that focused on protecting the public or meeting public interests. The National Health Service plan emphasised the Government’s commitment to develop meaningful accountability within health care.

Already, considerable reforms of health professional regulation were under way, affecting all professions through the establishment of an umbrella body, the Health Regulators’ Council, of which the Society would be a part. In addition, proposals directly affecting the medical, nursing and other professions (such as physiotherapists, chiropodists, podiatrists and dieticians) pointed the way with the introduction of a level of lay representation that resulted in a professional majority of no more than one.

The Government had also voiced its intention to link continuing registration of professionals to demonstrable competence, a move that the Society had welcomed in the interests of the public.

The Council noted that the framework to introduce the first tranche of the Society’s disciplinary reforms and competence-based practising rights would be established under an Order in Council under the Health Act 1999 by the end of 2001. A second tranche of changes would await a second Order in Council at a later date. The Society has also been told to expect, during the course of this year, the implementation of long awaited regulations to establish a health committee to deal with pharmacists who were unfit to practise by reason of illness or impairment.

The Council agreed that, once it had considered the range of proposals that were to be drawn up by the Health Act Working Party, it would prepare proposals for an Order in Council and submit them to the Government. Any proposal taken forward by the Government would be open to consultation with the affected professions.

Commenting after the Council’s special meeting, the Society’s President, Mrs Christine Glover, said: “The Society is a first rate regulator and it is very much in the profession’s interest to ensure that our working methods are up with the best - and can be seen so to be. It is absolutely right that such high expectations are placed on us: the public wants and needs to have confidence in all its health professions.”

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