The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7272 p599
25 October 2003

Society summary

London branch launches preregistration trainee support

One of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's London branches has launched an initiative to support preregistration trainees in the branch area. The West Metropolitan branch includes more than 80 preregistration trainees — the second highest total of any branch — and its committee has decided to devote the first 15 to 30 minutes of each branch meeting to them. The committee hopes to capture their interest so that they will remain active members after they register.

The initiative was launched on 8 October at the branch’s first meeting of the 2003–04 season. Welcoming trainees to the meeting, the Society’s head of public relations and membership, Jean-Pierre Moser, outlined the branch system and affirmed the Council’s commitment to it. He explained how the Council uses the branch network as a sounding board, partly through meetings such as the annual branch representatives’ meeting in May and the branch secretaries’ meeting in October.

Mr Moser said that the Council hoped to make use of the branch network to help roll out the Society’s continuing professional development programme. It had allocated a budget of £60,000 to investigate how this could best be done.

The branch says that preregistration topics at future meetings are to include the registration examination and brief overviews of each of the three main area of pharmacy practice — hospital, community and primary care.