The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7258 p83-85
19 July 2003

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Letters to the Editor

CPD

Can I serve on a careers panel?

From Mr K. G. Bridger, MRPharmS

Dr Robert Dewdney's response (PJ, 5 July, p13) to David Shenton's comments about voluntary health care advice given by retired pharmacists was clear and definitive. However, Mr Shenton's letter prompts me to raise a further point about a similar issue.

I, too, am a retired pharmacist and from time to time I have been asked to represent pharmacy on a careers panel conducted at a local school. These occasions are conducted on an informal basis with a "What's my line?" question-and-answer structure. I am sure many other pharmacists provide this kind of service for young people and, like me, do so on a voluntary, unpaid basis. I have no intention of being involved with continuing professional development when it becomes mandatory for practising pharmacists. Does this mean, when the time comes, I will no longer be able to offer my services in this way, even though my responses to questions never include specific medical advice?

Ken Bridger
Ringmer, East Sussex

Not going to be encumbered with the burden of bureaucracy

From Mr E. A. Silverberg, MRPharmS

I should like to add my support to Dr Norman Harris's remarks (PJ, 12 July, p48). I registered in 1958. My career has been varied, from owner of my own community pharmacy for 35 years to group senior pharmacist for a 40-branch company until my semi-retirement two years ago.

During that time I have developed and set up residential and nursing home dosage systems. I have been responsible for the induction and training of pharmacists joining the multiple that I have been associated with for the past 12 years in addition to supervising the development of the company electronic patient medication record systems. None of these activities could have been performed without the necessary ongoing training. I also provide emergency locum cover in my area.

I have no intention of being encumbered with the burden of bureaucracy necessary to record my ongoing continuing professional development once this becomes mandatory. If this necessitates my resignation from the register, then so be it.

Eric Silverberg
Swansea

Should industrial pharmacists remain on the register?

From Mrs A. B. V. Chalmers, MRPharmS

Bamboozled by all the close print concerning the modernisation of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and, as a rather disinterested industrial pharmacist, I thought I might get some understanding of whether the Royal Pharmaceutical Society represented me if I attended a Charter roadshow. So, I attended the one at the Society's headquarters on 30 June.

I am grateful to the Secretary and Registrar for a clear presentation directed at the audience and then the bonus elucidation from Marcus Jolley, a non-pharmacist, as to the "regulatory" and "professional" remits of the Society and the mechanisms controlling them. Those on the Council and steeped in the Charter bandy these terms around, as well as talking about "regulating the profession". I find it all very confusing; clear definitions are called for. I dare say they may have been given in the PJ but I would rather skip the pages than plough through turgid material looking for them.

Many in the audience, particularly women, would have liked more discussion on an understandable matter closer to our hearts — the proposed active and non-active sectors of the future register. Please may we have a definition of "practising" pharmacist? I may be the proud possessor of a continuing professional development certificate but I know not whether I am "practising". I do not dispense, an activity for which only a pharmacist may be responsible. We in industry do jobs which call upon our pharmacy education and knowledge but these jobs may also be done by non-pharmacists. Even the demanding role of a Qualified Person is not exclusively the domain of registered pharmacists.

Will the Society please indicate for which of the sectors I should be putting myself forward? If it is the active sector and presuming the annual registration fee to be higher for active than for non-active folk, what will I be getting for my money? I do not find convincing the argument that membership fees for other professions allied to health are much greater. Why did ours rocket up by such a large amount this century? Will the reorganisation and new Charter come with an ever higher annual registration fee? What will be the precise justification? Will it be worth an industrial "pharmacist" remaining on the register at all?

Anthonia Chalmers
London W6

Wrist-play!

From Mr J. B. Paige, MRPharmS

Until I read the letter from M. J. Moon (PJ, 12 July, p48) I thought I was the only one who had been singled out for a "special" login password by the education division of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

As a critic of the Council and its policy on continuing professional development, I assumed that someone was trying to send me a message when I was given the password "wrist-play"!

Barrie Paige
Guernsey, Channel Islands

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