The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7337 p196
19 February 2005

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The future is pharmacy more
Putting NICE guidance into practice more

The future is pharmacy

Although the winds of change blowing through community pharmacy at the moment may have an icy edge to them, the future may not be so bleak. Some issues are explored in this week’s News feature (p201), which examines the impact of the changes in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Register and the new contracts on recruitment in community pharmacy.

Signs of upheaval may be reflected in the activity on the pharmacy business front (Panel, p202), which may further increase now that exit payments have been extended to all small pharmacies (p197). And that is in addition to the loss of over 2,000 pharmacists who have left the Register since January — which includes the expected annual exodus. However, the number of pharmacists opting to join the practising section of the Register may be higher than many expected.

At the same time, with the imminent introduction of the new contract in England and Wales, community pharmacy may appear to be a more attractive proposition to young pharmacists than it did a year ago. These are the pharmacists who wish to build on the clinical skills they picked up as students and have, until now, had relatively little opportunity to exercise outside the hospital sector. Yet, the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists does not seem too worried that the hospital sector will run out of locums as pharmacists switch to the community. Its concern is more to do with the supply of antipodean pharmacists, which is likely to fall dramatically — mainly owing to the ending of reciprocal registration agreements (PJ, 11 October 2003, p524) — and be of significance in future years (p202).

Therefore, while there are legitimate anxieties about staffing in the short-term, the opportunities in the profession have never been so good. And, with increasing numbers of teenagers opting for a career in pharmacy, in five years’ time, we may wonder what the fuss was all about.

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Putting NICE guidance into practice

Implementing guidance from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence is not as easy as it should be. NICE was primarily established to end postcode prescribing so that people had equal access to new therapies wherever they lived. In practice, that has only happened partially. So primary care trusts have implemented its guidance in idiosyncratic ways — except in the south west, at least, it seems. PCTS covering the area between and embracing north Somerset and south Gloucestershire have developed an implementation system that does ensure fairness over a wide area (Vision for pharmacy p208). It is a scheme that could be copied in other parts of the country.

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