The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7254 p872
21 June 2003

Society summary

Scottish Department

LHCC pharmacists suffer from "attitude problem"

Participants in a conference organised by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland have been told that Scottish community pharmacists suffer from an attitude problem.

Speaking in Dunblane on 14 June, Terry Findlay, divisional general manager, primary care, Greater Glasgow Health Board, told the third annual local health care co-operatives (LHCCs) conference that pharmacists can be really influential within the LHCCs if they assert themselves. Instead, they tend to complain about being marginalised by general practitioners.

Pharmacists working in primary care should have significant negotiating advantages because of the breadth and quality of the service they routinely offer to patients, Mr Findlay said.

Mr Findlay added that legislation was being prepared in Scotland for establishing community health partnerships (CHPs), which would be far superior to LHCCs. In many cases, the voluntary LHCCs were GP-led, without meaningful input from other important stakeholders.

The proposal for setting up CHPs in Scotland was among seven recommendations in the White Paper "Partnership for care", launched by Scottish Health Minister Malcolm Chisholm on 27 February. CHPs were designed to bring health professionals together at a local level to work with community planning partners in the promotion of good health. They would be more accountable to local communities, better matched with social work services and better able to represent local interests within the NHS boards that were due to be replace the trusts on 1 July.

Two further measures in the White Paper would involve health professionals and the public in redesigning services and establishing a new Scottish Health Council to help the public engage with the Health Service.

Direct care Ken Penman, project manager, Tayside Primary Care Trust, gave an update on the success of the "Direct care at the chemist" initiative being piloted in Tayside and in the Ayrshire and Arran Health Board areas. Patients who could claim exemption from the prescription tax were able to register with a pharmacy and obtain medicines prescribed by pharmacists under the NHS. Most of the patients treated (73 per cent) said that they would have consulted their GP if the scheme had not been available.

Some 12,000 patients had registered in the two health board areas and no great problems had been reported. Mr Penman said that it was hoped to roll out the scheme throughout the health board area.

Primary care research The work of the "virtual" Scottish School of Primary Care was outlined by its research education manager, Lucy McCloughlan. She said that a synergistic relationship existed between development and research. The school was seeking to increase research skills (capability) in primary care and to make sure that the necessary structures, processes and resources (capacity) were in place.

Ms McCloughan invited pharmacists in Scotland to contact the school for advice on all aspects of practice research (tel 0131 651 4009; fax: 0131 651 4010; e-mail office@sspc.uk.com; website www.sspc.uk.com).

Policy development Alison Strath (Right Medicine Implementation Team, Scottish Executive), giving an overview of policy development, said that the three important areas for development were the pharmaceutical care programmes (including the management of repeat prescribing), supplementary prescribing and e-pharmacy. The latter had been ongoing for more than five years and was a highly technical project but progress was being made in establishing information transfer throughout the health care team.

Cardiac health Christine Alford (Paisley LHCC) reported that community pharmacies in Paisley were successfully carrying out smoking cessation and healthy eating campaigns out as part of the "Have a heart" project to improve cardiac health in the town.

Diabetes screening Liz Grant (public health pharmacist, Greater Glasgow Health Board) presented results from a feasibility study in Glasgow that showed the effectiveness of blood glucose screening in pharmacies in the identification of latent diabetes.