BPC 2001 summary

Can community pharmacy learn from the past to help shape the future?

A “manifesto” for community pharmacy was launched by medM Ltd at the Conference on 23 September. The manifesto covers lessons that can be learnt from the history of pharmacy, the threats that currently face the profession and finding new directions for pharmacy.

The manifesto’s author, Dr Darrin Baines, director of medM, told The Journal that the aim of the manifesto was to provide “therapy for pharmacists”.

The importance of examining the history of pharmacy is stated in the manifesto: “By harnessing the lessons of the past, community pharmacists can begin to find new ways of shaping their own destinies, and be free from manipulation by those who plan to radically reform their profession.”

Dr Baines said that the Government had had a good opportunity in the pharmacy plan for England, launched at last year’s Conference, but that it had failed to capitalise on it. “The Government and the profession are failing to engage the rank and file of community pharmacists,” he said. “Community pharmacists are not apathetic; they are just not organised.”

He added that the pharmacy plan was a list of options rather than a strategy. It was a proper strategy that was needed.

Examining the future of community pharmacy, the manifesto states that if it is reformed without respecting the value of existing arrangements that “the Government may unintentionally undermine a whole series of interlinked assumptions, relations and conventions, which are normally hidden, that shape the way medicines are delivered and used under the NHS”.

Dr Baines said: “In other words, getting rid of community pharmacy is a bit like abolishing traffic light: the result would be confusion and chaos.”

The manifesto concludes that the future of pharmacy depends on the will of individual pharmacists to find ways of combining the traditional strengths of the profession with the modern opportunities offered by the pharmacy plan.

Pharmacists can make suggestions about the future of pharmacy and comment on other people’s suggestions on medM’s website (www.medm.co.uk).

The medM manifesto costs £20 and can be ordered on the forms enclosed with this week’s Journal. It is also available on medM’s website.

Commenting on the manifesto, Royal Pharmaceutical Society Council member Sultan Dajani said: “Our future is shaped by our thoughts and our actions today. While we cannot direct the winds of change, Darrin Baines shows us how we can adjust the sails to move forward and, more importantly, to stay afloat.”

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