Society to develop pharmacy leaders at local level
Plans for developing and supporting key pharmacists to become competent and professional leaders at a local level were praised by members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council on 5 August at the August
Council meeting.
A paper outlining the project’s strategic intent and initial plans
was presented to the Council by the Society’s head of professional
leadership, Anne Adams. She said that power, responsibility and resources
in the NHS are being increasingly devolved to local level, and national
organisations cannot hope to have sufficient influence in so many locations.
Consequently, local pharmacy leaders need to think and act strategically
to position themselves and their colleagues to capitalise on opportunities,
minimise threats and move the profession forward.
Although good natural leaders will inevitably find a way to develop themselves
and attain positions of power and influence, it is unlikely that there
will be enough leaders without help, Mrs Adams said. The strategy will
seek to address how to maximise individuals’ potential and work
towards achieving good, or better, leaders in each locality.
Mrs Adams said that a recent focus group for primary care pharmacists,
led by the NHS Leadership Centre, concluded that pharmacists have the
same leadership development needs as other professions in the NHS, based
on the NHS Leadership Qualities framework. There is an immediate need
to develop to a high level the core leadership skills of self-awareness,
political astuteness, broad scanning and effective and strategic influencing.
Mrs Adams went on to say that, because of the complex nature of pharmacy
practice, local pharmacy leadership can be viewed as a distributed leadership
network with several individuals and organisations playing an important
part. Those leaders must work effectively together to achieve the aims
of the profession and the NHS and to maximise patient benefit.
Aims and objectives
Mrs Adams said that the strategy has three aims: to improve continuously
the quality of local pharmacy leadership, linking to the NHS but not
solely reliant on it; to drive the spread of good and innovative practice;
and to raise the profile and awareness of good local pharmacy leaders
within the NHS.
The objectives would be to identify local pharmacy leaders and ensure
they have the opportunity to develop leadership skills, to raise awareness
of the meaning and importance of developing such skills, to encourage
pharmacists to focus on leadership skills as part of their continuing
professional development, to support local pharmacy leaders by helping
them to network and providing information to help them create their own
local vision, and to encourage local pharmacy leaders to contribute to
national thinking on the profession’s future.
To deliver these aims and objectives, the initial intent is to focus
on five areas: gaining support for the leadership development strategy;
increasing pharmacists’ participation in leadership development
programmes; working with pharmacy networks; communication, both within
the profession and externally; and promoting the development of leadership
skills as part of CPD.
Mrs Adams added that different strategies in England, Scotland and Wales
meant that leadership development would need to be taken forward differently
in the three countries.
Sid Dajani asked whether the work will complement or compete with Pharmaceutical
Services Negotiating Committee work on developing pharmacists as local
leaders.
Mrs Adams said that she has already been talking to the PSNC about ways
of working together, and she and Mike King, the PSNC’s head of
professional development, would be talking to the NHS Leadership Centre
shortly. Resources
The Treasurer, John Jolley, asked Mrs Adams to elaborate on a statement
in the paper that, as the project rolls forward, it may be necessary
to ask the Council for additional resources to develop and deliver
specific aspects.
Mrs Adams said that she does not at present wish to ask for additional
funding. Specific funding may become available through the NHS Leadership
Centre, with which the Society is working, but nothing is definite yet.
Nicola Gray asked whether there are opportunities to tie the work in
with the Society’s workforce research and maybe pull in information
from the work on innovation.
Mrs Adams said that she would welcome that. The work also ties in with
CPD and with succession planning.
Bob Michell said that the NHS Leadership Qualities framework has a corporate
look to it. It could be British Airways or Marks & Spencer. It lists
personal leadership qualities [self-belief, self-awareness, self-management,
drive for improvement and personal integrity] but, if pharmacy is really
to bear the torch in the interests of patients, the personal quality
that matters most is critical acumen — never mind the corporate
bits and pieces.
Leaders also have to be able to judge where evidence needs to be gathered
and where it needs to be generated, said Professor Michell, because there
is much opinion but little evidence. For example, deciding whether particular
aspects of health care are better managed in the community would need
evidence to back the flow of resources that may be needed. This is particularly
true with chronic care. For example, are diabetes patients better off
cared for by the GP, the pharmacist or the hospital? Everybody has an
opinion, but nobody knows. Even more important is the issue of drug interactions
that impair people’s lifestyles. Is the evidence available, or
does it need to be generated, to assert that pharmacists are the people
to ask, not the GP or the local hospital?
Mrs Adams said that Professor Michell’s comments highlight the
fact that the leadership strategy gives pharmacy the opportunity to produce
something aligned to the NHS Leadership Qualities drive but not solely
reliant on it. However, the profession may need to take specific things
forward.
Douglas Simpson asked how average pharmacists would recognise a leader
in their midst. Will there be any kind of recognition structure for leaders?
Mrs Adams said that, although local leaders would have many common qualities
and experience, there would probably not be a single model of pharmacy
leader. In terms of recognition, she imagined that that would come through
the NHS.
Angela Timoney, chairman of the Society’s Scottish Executive, said
that the NHS is investing a lot in leadership development and it is right
that the Society should take forward its own profession. But how would
the Society know that its work has made a difference compared with the
work the NHS is supporting? The Council needs to be clear what it is
investing money in.
The Secretary and Registrar, Ann Lewis, said that much of the NHS work
has been directed at those in the managed sector. What Mrs Adams was
talking about is making sure that all pharmacists are included. Researchers
in Aberdeen had carried out a literature review illustrating that pharmacists
generally do not go for management roles and do not go for leadership.
The Society is trying to change that culture.
Miss Timoney noted that the project is only about local leadership development
and asked whether the Council has decided that national pharmacy leadership
development does not need to be incorporated into the strategy.
Mrs Adams said that the national level does not come within her remit.
However, the work will make a difference nationally. Council members
started out as local pharmacy leaders, and some still are. Younger people
Gill Hawksworth, describing the document as excellent, said that she
has long been concerned about the problems of leadership on a local
basis. From her own local experience, she would wish to harness some
of the younger people coming through at an early stage to help build
their confidence to go forward. She asked Mrs Adams to bear in mind
the younger people and specifically the succession planning issues.
Mrs Adams said that that is implicit, if not explicit, in the strategy.
There is certainly a need to engage younger pharmacists, and that is
something that would perhaps be taken forward.
Linda Stone said that Mrs Adams’s work is critical to the development
of the profession. But pharmacy is a long way behind some other professions,
which seem to have some in-built leadership skills already there on graduation.
Leadership should be embedded within pharmacy at the undergraduate level.
Her own view is that the undergraduate courses now put more effort into
building in team-working, leadership and the critical appraisal skills
that would allow Professor Michell’s “critical acumen”.
But it will take a long time to filter through, and there is a need to
bridge the gap. Branch involvement
Mrs Stone added that she would also like to see the Society’s branches
involved. But, as with involving the branches in CPD, resources are needed.
She would like the Society to pursue external funding, if any is available.
Finally, Mrs Stone said that she sees every single pharmacist as a potential
leader, even if only within a small pharmacy or a small area of practice.
Pharmacists have to be able to lead, and that is why skills development
is important from start to finish.
Christine Glover said that there is a need to articulate aspects of leadership
that are specific to pharmacy. Only by measuring such specifics can the
profession find out whether its leadership development work is making
a difference. “If it is in the generality, you cannot actually
measure anything. Then you are into the business of, ‘Is this via
the NHS or is it via us in the profession?’.”
Taking up Dr Hawksworth’s point about young people, Mrs Glover
said that their training makes young people now much more articulate
and much more assertive than in her day. Their talent should be captured
before it gets knocked out of them somewhere along the line on a dispensary
bench.
Gerald Alexander, picking up on Professor Michell’s intervention
on critical acumen, said that what is required of leaders is judgement,
to be able to identify skills in others and to manage people, trying
to lock them into the jigsaw, working with local people and local groups.
Those skills can be used to help identify patients’ unmet needs,
which in turn allows one to determine pharmacists’ educational
needs through personal development. It will go beyond that because pharmacists
will be identifying their own leadership skills through the progress
of local development. Responsibility
The Vice-President, Hemant Patel, said that the paper does not define
leadership and perhaps it needs to be defined. For him, leadership
is about accepting responsibility and promoting change. Pharmacists
tended to work within templates or frameworks, but a time of rapid
change required people to be brave — to break through the frameworks
and take responsibility. He would also like see the paper include something
about values, because leadership should be about making value-based
decisions, with judgment, trust, etc, coming afterwards.
Another point, said the Vice-President, is that people should be able
to make sacrifices in order to be socially responsible. Pharmacists should
be able to accept greater responsibility for helping the patients.
Finally, leadership qualities need to be developed and instilled on the
Council and other national bodies as well as at local level. The Council
could not do anything about other national bodies, but it was in a position
to include some kind of leadership development programme in the induction
process for new Council members
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