The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 266 No 7150 p749-752
June 2, 2001

  The Profession
  PSNC
  In-store pharmacies
  Packaging
  Medicines supply
  Depression
  Locum pharmacy
  The army
  Methadone dispensing

The Profession

A critical point in its development

From Dr P. J. Brown, FRPharmS

I profoundly disagree with John Ferguson’s view that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society should not be the accreditation body for pharmacy technicians (PJ, May 19, p675). It is essential that the Society remains in control of all aspects of pharmacy and all who practise it, and I do not believe that extending the Society’s accreditation mandate would lead to its break-up. To the contrary, I believe that it would strengthen it and ensure that the pharmacy services provided to the public were more comprehensive and better integrated than at present.

If the profession follows Mr Ferguson’s line, the decision will be to maintain the status quo. In his world, there are responsible pharmacists and delegated technicians providing services through community pharmacies and never the twain shall meet. But the status quo cannot be maintained. Pharmacy has just lost the resale price maintenance war, and must seriously consider what role it has on the high street. Does the public really need highly qualified pharmacists handing out prescriptions and selling cut-price OTC medicines?

One only has to read Ian Wood’s letter (PJ, May 12, p654) to realise the sad reality of today’s situation. Like what he says or not, I suspect that Mr Wood’s view are shared by many of his age, and these are the pharmacists of the future.

You rightly say in your leader on May 19 (p665) that the abolition of RPM was inevitable. The profession should have realised this fact and used the time provided by the protection of RPM to decide its future. Such deliberations that have taken place have been all about maintaining the status quo, that is ensuring the preservation of the pharmacist’s role in the high street pharmacy, and not about how best can pharmacists serve the community.

I believe that the future for pharmacy will include the following:

First, clinical pharmacy will become the major professional activity, practised in primary care centres, where pharmacists will manage the selection and use of NHS pharmaceutical products.

Second, we will have direct mail dispensing at either a national or European Community level for the provision of pharmaceutical products to the chronically ill: the benefits being convenience and cost.

Third, there will be a significant relaxation of the need for pharmacists to supervise community pharmacy dispensing. Indeed, I suggest that we will have to invent a new qualification of associate pharmacist to run community pharmacies (not technicians), which will be administered by the Society.

Fourth, for those pharmacists who remain in community pharmacy, ie working for Boots, Lloyds, Asda and the like, there will be a community health care role, ensuring that NHS wellness campaigns are delivered effectively and they will be paid a salary for so doing. With RPM out of the way, I do not see community pharmacy progressing down the primary health care line, that is treating more minor ailments. This happens already to the extent with which the public is comfortable: there is no more water in this particular well.

I suggest that what I have outlined will suit Mr Wood and his colleagues. It shows that there is no place for the status quo as advocated by Mr Ferguson, and that the general public and NHS patients would be better served by the profession.

Philip J. Brown
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

Opportunity to aspire to truly professional status

From Mr D. G. Williams, MRPharmS

I was interested to read the letter from Ian Wood (PJ, May 12, p654) setting forth his disappointment in a career which he evidently thought would fulfil his expectations of being satisfying and exciting.

I suppose the most outstanding feature of Mr Wood’s current position is that it is not one for a pharmacist at all. Typing labels and filing prescriptions is a job for a trained clerk, working under the supervision of a pharmacist.

Surely, instead of sitting in front of a computer (dratted things), Mr Wood should be sitting in front of patients, proffering the advice he is well qualified to give. In this situation, I am sure he would find a constant need for his scientific background, as applied to the complex chemicals being swallowed by his patients and the complex situations under which such ingestions must be continued, to the maintenance of their wellbeing. The doctors will not do this, being too preoccupied with medical things to have the time for it, and having most likely forgotten much of the chemistry, physiology and toxicology that they ever knew. What an opportunity this kind of situation offers the pharmacist aspiring to truly professional status.

As for the question of leaving pharmacy for pastures more adventurous, I think that Mr Wood has to ask himself whether there is anything at all he has wanted to do, or to be, that remaining in pharmacy will be most unlikely to bring his way. If so, I would say to him — “Don’t leave it too late!”

David G. Williams
London SE9

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