Moving pharmacy forward

So far, the general election campaign has been rather dull (apart from the Prescott incident). However hard the Conservatives fight in the few days before June 7, it does not seem to be a question of who wins, but rather how large the Labour majority will be, how many seats the Lib Dems will wrest from the Conservatives and how low the turnout will be.

Opinion-forming pharmacists seem to share the general mood that the campaign is no more than a short respite from the real business of moving pharmacy forward, of redefining the role for pharmacists and for ensuring that the pharmacy plan “Pharmacy in the future” is put into action.

Professor Steve Chapman, speaking at the first Primary Care Pharmacy conference organised by PJ Publications last week, was uncompromising in his views that pharmacists have to change if they are to survive (p738). His vision of the future is, among other images, of pharmacists providing truly patient-centred care.

His views are reflected elsewhere by other contributors to this week’s issue. Dr Philip Brown, writing in a letter (p749), argues against the maintenance of the status quo. The profession cannot afford to stand still. He argues that pharmacists need to take on greater responsibility and delegate tasks that they do not need to do themselves. This is despite the decision made by the board of the National Pharmaceutical Association not to support some members of the Society’s Council in their view that self-checking by trained technicians is acceptable (p736).

All these views are intertwined in one way or another and encapsulated in the “Broad Spectrum” article from Professor David Taylor (p753). He discusses what constitutes a “profession” both in a historical context and in a contemporary political climate. And it is a question that all pharmacists should ask themselves and decide what they understand about the concept in both an organisational sense and an individual one.

Once the Labour Party is re-elected, the temperature will rise — for all professions. The previous administration has already had a real “go” at the medical profession, in Professor Taylor’s words regarding it “as little more than [an] anachronistic barrier to progress and productive change that [is] committed to serving narrow vested interests”. So far the Labour administration has left nurses and pharmacists alone, but there will soon come a time when, if a future government sees the vested interests of a profession standing in the way of the realisation of its agenda, it will not resort to pleasantries to get its way.

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