The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7200 p781-786
1 June 2002

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Branch Representatives' meeting summary

Campaigns could raise pharmacy's profile

Three motions calling for campaigns to raise the public profile of pharmacy were carried unanimously by the meeting.

One motion sought to raise the profession's visibility through a conspicuous pharmacist-led campaign to reduce drug-related morbility and improve concordance. Another called on the Society to promote pharmacy as a health profession specialising in medicines. The third asked for an awareness campaign to educate the public about pharmacy.

PETER JONES (Edinburgh and Lothians) moved "that, in the light of recent reports by the Audit Commission, 'A spoonful of sugar', and the Scottish Executive Health Department, 'The right medicine: a strategy for pharmaceutical care in Scotland', the Society must be the body spearheading a pharmacist-led programme to reduce preventable drug-related morbidity and increase concordance to improve the outcome of medicines usage by patients. Such an initiative must be clearly evident to the general public."

The documents named in the motion both recognised pharmacists' contribution to patient care. The Society should give full professional support to pharmacists who were implementing the reports' recommendations. It should also ensure that pharmacists were suitably trained and motivated to meet the challenges, gaining the respect and confidence of the public and raise the ceiling of public expectation from the profession.

STUART McTAGGART (Edinburgh and Lothians), seconding the motion, said that pharmacists daily made interventions that protected patients from inappropriate prescribing or purchase of medicines. But society in general did not recognise pharmacists' important role. The Society should take the lead and run public relations campaigns to raise awareness of what pharmacists did.

The second motion, moved by ANNE JOHNSTON (Dudley and Stourbridge), called on the Society to "promote pharmacy as a health profession which specialises in medicines — the dispensing of prescriptions, the recommendation of medicines, the use and misuse of medicines, the interactions between them and the management of medicines. All should be overseen by the profession with the training to do this. Pharmacists are the only health professionals with four years' university training and a further year of practical training in medicines."

Miss Johnston said that she did not wish to denigrate what the Council was already doing, but pharmacists' role in protecting public health and encouraging safe and effective medicines use needed to be more visible. By aiming for concordance the profession could probably gain some allies, including patient and consumer associations.

ELIZABETH DORAN (British Pharmaceutical Students Association) moved "that the Society should undertake an active pharmacy awareness campaign to educate members of the public about the pharmacy profession". The fact that this was the third motion about the profession's public image reflected the strength of feeling among members. Pharmacy's image as the poor relation in health care was affecting the rate of applications to schools of pharmacy.

Without the public's support and confidence, the ideal of medicines management would be difficult to achieve. With a greater awareness of community pharmacists' role and related opportunities for better health, the money allocated to NHS Direct and walk-in centres could have been redirected to better serve the nation's health.

CATHERINE WALKER (BPSA), seconding the motion, said that the lack of proactive PR to the public needed addressing. A recent television drama had strongly implied that its pharmacist villain, who murdered patients and family using chloroform, had become a pharmacist because training as a doctor would have involved going to university. Unless a dramatic and proactive public awareness campaign was undertaken, that was the kind of image of pharmacists that patients would take away.