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The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7184 p187-191
9 February 2002

Society summary

Derby branch dinner

Pharmacy must push forward despite "smack in the face"

Community pharmacy must co-operate in implementing "Pharmacy in the future" despite the "smack in the face" of the recent large cut in National Health Service dispensing fees after years of financial attrition.
That view was expressed by Alan Nathan, a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council, when he spoke at a dinner of the Society's Derby branch on 25 January,

Mr Nathan said that the National Pharmaceutical Association was wrong to suggest that community pharmacists should take on nothing new until they are better paid for what they are doing already. If they take that attitude they will be bypassed and in a few years will find themselves with no role at all, Mr Nathan suggested.

Community pharmacy is being offered its first — and perhaps last — real chance to become a fully integrated part of the health team, Mr Nathan said. If it fails to take it, the opportunities will be snatched up by other health professionals, because the Government has made it clear that nothing will be reserved to pharmacists as of right – not even dispensing. If pharmacists want to increase or even just preserve their current contribution to health care, they will have to fight off competition from outside the profession. It has been made plain that pharmacists will be expected to come forward with ideas for improving patient care, as they have already begun to do in many areas through the activities of pharmacy development groups.

Mr Nathan continued: "I can understand that community pharmacists are feeling demoralised at the moment, and disinclined to co-operate with a Government they feel has treated them shabbily in recent years. They also justifiably claim that they are just too busy keeping going the under-resourced NHS services that they currently provide, to have the time or the money to invest in new ones.

"But I believe that they must grasp the opportunities to move ahead professionally that we expect will present themselves in the next two to three years, because we will find that payment for our traditional services, such as dispensing, will be progressively reduced as funds are diverted to those that provide added value."

Mr Nahan said that the writer of a recent article (PJ, 19 January, p54) had hit on an uncomfortable truth when he said: "As a profession we are quick to claim we are exploited and undervalued, yet we are slow to respond to changing demands." If community pharmacists refuse to change because of the way they have been treated in recent years, then community pharmacy will have no future. If, on the other hand, they take up the challenge of "Pharmacy in the future" and develop and provide medicines management and other services that improve patient care and show the worth of pharmacists, then the future will be bright and professionally rewarding.