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The 59th annual British Pharmaceutical Students Association conference began on April 7 in Portsmouth

Catherine Walker elected president
Society travel bursary
Two-week cross-sector preregistration placement not long enough
Executive to appoint BPSA representatives
Patient counselling competition
Student of the year to go to Cairo for IPSF

Catherine Walker elected president

Catherine Walker, a fourth-year student at Bradford school of pharmacy, was elected the new president of the BPSA on April 13. Last year Miss Walker held the position of treasurer and was also conference organiser, along with Jo Hood, for the 2000 conference.

Andrew Christopherson, Strathclyde, will take over as vice-president from Emily Horwill. Five new honorary life members were appointed by the conference. They were Noel Wicks, Mary Jobling, Gavin Miller, Emily Horwill and Gillian Campbell.

Society travel bursary

Emily Horwill, vice-president, reported her attendance at the 2000 International Pharmaceutical Student Federation congress in El Salvador (see PJ, September 2, 2000, p337). She had received support (£500) from the Society's Glyn Jones Memorial Fund.

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Two-week cross-sector preregistration placement not long enough

Two weeks of cross-sector experience as part of the preregistration training year would not be long enough to achieve anything, JOHN D'ARCY, chief executive, National Pharmaceutical Association said during a question and answer session.

The panel, which was made up of Mr D'Arcy, Nicola Wake, honorary life member, Andrew Tucker, Pharmacy2u, and Dr Zubin Austin, lecturer in evidence-based medicine at the University of Toronto, and chaired by Digby Emson, superintendent pharmacist for Boots the Chemists, was asked to comment on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's recent recommendation that all preregistration placements should include two weeks' cross-sector experience.

Mr D'Arcy said that if there were benefits from understanding other sectors then there should be a greater onus on doing placements in vacations and as university placements. A split preregistration year would facilitate understanding of other sectors but there would be problems matching up community placements with other sectors.

Mrs WAKE said that if pharmacists did not have an understanding of other sectors of the profession then it would be difficult to work together. Two weeks' experience was not long enough but, as a preregistration tutor, Ms Wake said that she recognised that it was a start and an opportunity.

Voice of the profession not heard

Asked whether or not the panel thought the Society performed its public relations function adequately, Mr D'ARCY said that in PR terms, pharmacists were not “sexy” and that “pharmacy hides its light under a bushell”.

However, the public already thought that pharmacists were brilliant. Mr D'Arcy added that the Government was finally realising that it could use pharmacists. “But we must never over-promise and under-deliver.”

Mrs WAKE said that as a profession, pharmacy was not being seen to comment on issues that affected it.

Mr TUCKER said that in his previous position as a health policy adviser for the Liberal Democrat Party he had been lobbied by various organisations. He said there had been a pecking order with the pharmaceutical industry at the top, followed by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing. There was never a pharmacy voice, he said. “I did not even know the Society existed until after I left Westminster,” he said. Members of the pharmacy profession spent too much time talking to themselves rather than everyone else, he added.

Delegation of tasks

Asked which roles the panel thought community pharmacists should delegate to assistants, Mr D'ARCY said that too many pharmacists were caught up with the mechanics of dispensing. He saw no problem with trained technicians checking prescriptions and believed that they might be more focussed on the task than pharmacists.

In terms of delegating the role of advising patients about their medicines, Mr D'Arcy said he would be more reluctant. “We would need to be clear that there was a system in place so that the assistant would know when they were at the limit of their ability.” He said that pharmacists should be the ones on the pharmacy floor talking to patients. He added that ideally there would be more than one pharmacist in each pharmacy.

Dr AUSTIN said that liability was an issue. Pharmacists would be reluctant to delegate responsibility if technicians were not legally recognised because they would have to bear any liability, he said.

Executive to appoint BPSA representatives

Noel Wicks, the outgoing president of the BPSA, proposed to the conference that BPSA representatives at each school of pharmacy should be appointed by the executive. Currently, representatives are elected by the students from each school. “BPSA representatives are fundamental to the BPSA for ensuring information gets through to pharmacy students,” he said.

He argued that the current system was unfair as representatives were often getting elected without knowing what the role involved. Interviewing prospective representatives would give candidates the opportunity to ask questions about the role and to make an informed decision about whether they should be standing.

Mr Wicks added that the motion had not been proposed to disempower students but to produce better representatives.

DUNCAN MANN, honorary life member of the BPSA, disagreed: “A good representative is one whom students are inspired by. The best people to pick that person are the students from each school. There would be a feeling that the executive was imposing its views and it would look arrogant.”

Mr Wicks summed up, saying that the BPSA could no longer leave representatives in a situation where they did not know what they were getting into. By appointing suitable representatives the BPSA executive would be spared the difficulties it faced when representatives failed to deliver.

The association carried the motion with an amendment to include the local pharmacy students associations in the appointment process.

Patient counselling competition

This year's Johnson & Johnson patient counselling competition was won by Jane Schofield, a third-year pharmacy student at Bradford University. David Mitchell, commercial director, Johnson & Johnson MSD Consumer Pharmaceuticals, who presented the £175 award, said that the candidates had all been exceptional. Commenting on Miss Schofield's counselling skills, Mr Mitchell said her interaction with the “patient” had been very professional. “She was inquisitive and searching during the role play but never invasive,” he said.

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Student of the year to go to Cairo for IPSF

Stefan-David McDonald, a third-year student at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, won this year's Reckitt Benckiser “Student of the year” award. He will go to the 2001 International Pharmaceutical Students Federation congress in Egypt. The finals were held at the conference on April 9 and were followed by an awards ceremony at Portsmouth Naval Base Museum. All the finalists were presented with a copy of the 'Handbook of pharmacy medicine'. Runners-up Helen Badham, Cardiff, and Mark Savage, Sunderland, also received a copy of 'Martindale'.

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