The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7197 p632
11 May 2002

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Clean sweep for modernisation

Regulatory reform is sweeping through the health professions. Although the Government has no particular quarrel with the way pharmacy has been exercising its responsibilities, the profession has been caught up by the modernisation broom. In pharmacy it is causing havoc. These are the words of Professor Peter Noyce (PDF* 60K) writing in this week's issue (Agenda for 2002, p649). The question that needs to be answered is, why is the new broom causing so much havoc? There is no simple answer. However, the fact that pharmacists have no organisation that represents their individual needs underpins many of their anxieties, a point elaborated by two other contributors who add to the debate (p644 and p645).

The National Pharmaceutical Association, the Company Chemists Association, the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists and the pharmacy negotiating bodies in all parts of Great Britain have important roles to play. But they have never joined forces or created an overarching body that would be seen by the Government and other health care professions to be the voice of pharmacists, and which employee and locum pharmacists could also join. (All too often this mantle has fallen uneasily on the Society's shoulders.) There are some good, and some less good, historical reasons why this type of representative body does not exist, but it is time they were put aside.

The lack of such a body has not helped the process of regulatory reform for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Whatever some members of the Society may believe, expect or even hope, the Society cannot represent individual pharmacists in the way that a trade union could. But because many members of the Society have nowhere else to turn to for those functions, they interpret modernisation as a threat to the professional representation offered by the Society.

However, modern regulation as envisaged by the Government is not necessarily a narrow activity. Yes, it entails control of admission to and removal from the register, and it sets and enforces professional and educational standards. But it also deals with a huge raft of professional issues, not least the searching out and promotion of good practice and the development of enhanced activities and roles.

A trade-union type representative body would also be interested in many of these professional matters, but it would be looking at them from the point of view of the individual pharmacist, not the profession as a whole. For example, the Society might define and promote the activity; the representative body might negotiate its price, although that is not the only way to cut the pharmacy cake.

Modernisation is not an issue just affecting the Society. For the profession to go forward effectively, other pharmacy bodies have a responsibility to help the Society define its future role more clearly and give modernisation a clean sweep.

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