The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7219 p523
12 October 2002

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Letters to the Editor

Community pharmacy

Not the time to be defending territory

From Dr B. P. Curwain, MRPharmS

Just before my recent two-week holiday, I agreed to speak at an open meeting arranged by a large local pharmaceutical committee. Being an enthusiastic and conscientious pharmacist, I spent some time in the sun, thinking about this, making notes and generally preparing what was to be an upbeat and positive presentation on the future for, in particular, community pharmacy.

The day was scheduled for a date soon after my return from leave on 7 October. Imagine my surprise to receive a message as soon as I arrived back in the United Kingdom to say that the LPC in question had decided to cancel the open day at short notice.

The day had been intended to provide a forum where community pharmacists and their representatives could get together with senior local primary care trust personnel (chief executives, directors, pharmacists etc), many of whom had, I understand, accepted invitations to attend.

Its cancellation can only send out negative messages about the willingness of the LPC fully to engage itself with the changing National Health Service. I do understand that community pharmacy is presently faced with an almost bewildering degree of uncertainty. There is the new national contract, LPS, the Office of Fair Trading report on control of entry, the projected upgrading of technicians and associated skill-mix issues, and so on. However, this is not the time to be battening down the hatches and defending territory. It is a time to be engaging with as many NHS partners as possible and discussing our future with them.

In fact, there are great opportunities for community pharmacy but it is also a time of danger as well as uncertainty. If we do not find a way to offer what the NHS now wants and needs from us, then rest assured that our political masters will find ways of making things happen without us. I would hate to see us lose the invaluable network of community pharmacies that now serves the population, but if we are not prepared to make the changes required of us, then the technology is there to allow this to happen, aided and abetted by the development of ancillary staff able to conduct dispensing in our absence. As well as central negotiations by the statutory bodies, let us please have plenty of local dialogue as well.

Brian Curwain
Chief Pharmacist
New Forest Primary Care Trust

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