No longer at the crossroads
Pharmacy is no longer at the crossroads, according
to MARSHALL DAVIES, President, Royal Pharmaceutical Society. “If we as
a profession fail to deliver on targets by the end of this Government’s
term then the window of opportunity for pharmacy may well close and other
medicines management options will be pursued.”
The profession will not realise the current opportunities
if it keeps its head down, he said. Community pharmacists in England needed
to understand the role that primary care trusts are set to play and get
positively involved with them. PCTs will not go out and seek co-operation
but if advice or offers of co-operation are taken to them, they will grab
it. “The message is go to them: do not wait for them to come to us,” he
said.
Pharmacists also need to work with other health
care professionals. Community pharmacists have too often worked in isolation
in the past and as a result have not been as effective as they might have
been, he said. The problem has been overcome by hospital pharmacists but
significant problems still face community pharmacy and this was why the
pharmacy plan is important.
Areas of development are in pharmacist prescribing,
electronic transfer of prescriptions and self care. Pharmacists need to
have all the skills to help people achieve better health outcomes. Asked
how this could be achieved, Mr Davies said that it should be through education.
He added that it is also up to pharmacists to keep themselves up-to-date
and to look positively and constructively at the issues faced. The profession
also needs to raise the general public and other professionals’ view of
pharmacy.
Although Mr Davies would not be drawn into anticipating
the results of the Office of Fair Trading Inquiry, he said that in the
“NHS plan” and its pharmacy programme, the Government had set a direction
in which it wanted the health service to move. Anything that undermined
this would not have the support of the Department of Health.
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