The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7307 p54
10 July 2004

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· Pharmacy education
· St John's wort
· Dispensing
· Antimicrobial resistance
· The Conference
· NHS Confederation
· The profession
· The Society
· The Journal

Letters to the Editor

The profession

Are we really partners with doctors?

From Mr E. Kalmanovitch, MRPharmS

The front cover of the 5 June issue of the PJ boldly states “Pharmacy and medicine in true partnership”. Partnership means equality. Perhaps practising members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society could give views on their experiences of how this applies, if at all, on status, remuneration, earnings potential, professional standing, job satisfaction and so on.

The responses should make some interesting reading.

Eugene Kalmanovitch
Nicosia, Cyprus

Society must take a leading role in future

From Dr N. Kometa, MRPharmS

The future of the profession of pharmacy lies in it taking a leading role in innovating modern and efficient methods of delivering health care services. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society should take an engaging, coherent and strategic position to represent all sections of the profession which are involved in the provision of services in the NHS either directly or indirectly, and demonstrate how they are making a significant contribution in the evolution of the NHS to other stakeholders such as patients, the public, other health care professions and the Government. A coherent strategy is needed at the highest level of the profession so that organisations that are already carrying out pioneering work in the delivery of modern health care services can be promoted as beacons for others to emulate.

There are many areas where the profession is leading the strategy or making significant contributions. Some of these include concordance, medicines partnership, the expert patient programme, medication review and advice, monitored dosage system, diagnostic testing, repeat prescribing, collection, delivery and domiciliary visit, continuing professional development and good professional governance.

In spite of the cost constraints and funding difficulties, the community pharmacy sector in particular, and the profession in general, should exhibit a propensity to embrace and implement high quality evidence-based research emanating from the different areas of pharmacy practice. In my opinion, funding will be attracted after implementation and demonstration of innovative and efficient modern health care practices in a modernising NHS. In other words, community pharmacy should be pre-emptive and proactive in leading the modernisation of service provision in primary care in the community, otherwise, it may end up being marginalised, as demonstrated in the initial constitution of primary care trust board membership.

Above all, it should not be forgotten that all human endeavours are concepts that become practice that are adopted and expanded.

Nsanyi Kometa
Hull

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