Last words on Mrs Brant
There can be no pharmacist in the land who is not thankful that the allegations made against Ghislaine Brant (the pharmacist who supplied Shipman with diamorphine, which he used for his nefarious activities) were thrown out by the Statutory Committee (PJ, 26 March, p349) and that the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence would take no further action (PJ, 16 April, p441).
Two correspondents in this week’s issue (p489) argue that the Council of
the Royal Pharmaceutical Society should have taken no action in the first instance.
However, Mrs Brant was criticised by Dame Janet Smith, who conducted the public
inquiry into the implications of Shipman’s activities (PJ, 24 July 2004,
p103). Given the public interest in the inquiry and the status given to its findings
by the Government, the Council, in our view, had no option but to investigate
the part Mrs Brant played.
However unfair it may seem that she had to undergo the further trauma of a Statutory
Committee hearing, the fact that Mrs Brant has been utterly exonerated by the
committee means her reputation remains intact. It would have been tarnished if
the criticisms wrongly levelled by Dame Janet had been the last public words
on her actions.
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Could BRM broaden its agenda in future?
Motions to be discussed at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s branch representatives’ meeting in May are published this week
(pp496–500).
It will come as no surprise that a third of them are concerned with the
restructuring of the Register and associated issues that have been raised
in the letters pages of The Journal over the past nine months. And it
seems likely that the views expressed will be received favourably by
the new Council when it meets for the first time in June since a majority
of the recently elected pharmacist members have pledged to re-examine
the issues at the earliest opportunity.
The BRM is an important forum for the views of members to be heard but
there have been mutterings in the past that successful motions have not
always been acted upon by Council. There will be high hopes among members
that resolutions passed at this year’s meeting will be more influential.
In future years, if increased expectations of the Council are realised,
members may be able to look forward to a more outward-looking May meeting
than the current motions suggest. Because of recent internal turmoil
members have become preoccupied with Society issues. However, the BRM
could be an opportunity for members to send loud and clear messages to
Government and other health professionals about pharmacy views on a whole
range of professional issues. Independent prescribing, children’s
medicines and packaging, for example, are all issues that are worthy
of debate by the BRM and might even attract national press coverage.
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