In the driving seat

Pharmacists in England now have the chance to take the driving seat in the development of medicines management programmes. Calls are already being made to the National Prescribing Centre requesting details and more information about the collaborative programme it is to establish at 25 pilot sites in the next financial year (see p378).

The programme mirrors the collaborative programme established for primary care under the stewardship of Dr John Oldham, a GP in Derbyshire. The Primary Care Collaborative started with a handful of primary care group pilots and by the end of last year had grown to involve 80 PCGs and trusts and about 400 GP practices.

The idea of these “collaboratives” is for the pilots to tackle service delivery in different ways and for the results to be pooled to find out what works and what does not, and for the best features to be identified and then disseminated as good practice throughout the health service.

What is exciting for pharmacists is that the medicines management services programme offers them the chance to be project facilitators in the pilot sites. According to Mr Richard Seal, who will take up the post of project team leader at the NPC at the end of April, the success of the pilots will depend on the project facilitators. They will need to be able to work across the disciplines and have a good knowledge of primary care.

For pharmacists in England it is a breakthrough, allowing them to take up the challenge offered in “Pharmacy in the future” to play a full part in delivering the Government's vision of the new National Health Service. The more pharmacists become involved in these pilots, the more their colleagues will benefit from the dissemination of ideas during the next phase of the collaborative as more primary care organisations join in.

For those pilots with another health care professional in the driving seat, there will still be a great deal for pharmacists involved in the pilots to learn. Mr David Thomson, director of pharmacy at the Greater Glasgow Primary Care NHS Trust argues this point in “Broad Spectrum” this week (p394). In a different context from medicines management — in this instance in relation to extending formal prescribing rights to pharmacists — he points out that doctors, nurses and pharmacists are all complementary to each other and that each has something to learn from the others.

Any pharmacist who is involved in a medicines management pilot site, at whatever level, now has the chance to influence the development of services throughout the NHS. The chance to be involved should not be passed up.

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