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Letters to the Editor
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The Society
Engaging future pharmacists
From Mr J. W. Wood
Jonathan Burton (PJ, 14 May, p581) calls on the unused potential in
the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s branch and regional network
to ensure that the Society reaches the wider membership. Mr Burton quite
rightly recognises the importance of the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association,
the official student organisation of the Society, in developing enthused
and involved future pharmacists.
Recent events suggest now is the time for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
and its members to re-engage with each other. Greater support and communication
with current and future members and their subsequent engagement, is vital
to the future of the Society, to ensure excellence in the profession,
and for the well-being of the public.
The BPSA works closely with the officers and many members of staff at
Lambeth. Over the past 12 months the BPSA and the Society have been developing
working relations to allow pharmacy students to become more involved
with the life and work of the Society, influencing and contributing to
the future of pharmacy. From involvement with liaison meetings, to research
projects, consultations, representation on committees, promotion of the
branches and collaboration with interest groups, the BPSA has been able
to spread a positive and engaging message to its thousands of members — future
members of the Society.
I urge the new Council to continue to recognise the value of and provide
central support for the BPSA.
James Wood
President,
British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association
Was there a planned purge of members from the Register?
From Dr C. M. Minchom
Two years ago I suggested that practising pharmacists should dust off
their chequebooks and be prepared to pay for those of us who left the
Register as disenfranchised members (PJ, 10 May 2003, p648). Earlier
this year I suggested that there might be a planned purge of us unwanted
pharmacists (PJ, 15 January, p50).
It transpires that approximately 3,500 members have left the Register
since December 2004, of whom 870 were struck off for non-payment of fees.
The average number struck off for non-payment of fees in each of the
previous two years was 325 members. The striking off of 870 is said by
the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s director of education and registration
to be “well within the Society’s limits of acceptability
[with] the restructuring of the register” (PJ, 16 April, p462) — so
it was a planned purge.
This would suggest that 10 per cent of this year’s fees increase
of £51 for practising pharmacists was planned to balance the fees
lost from those of us who have left.
I do not believe this purge is over. Some members who reregistered this
year did so to monitor what might happen before making the decision to
retire from the register in 2006. How much will the Council need to increase
the fees next year just to account for the next round of membership reduction?
Lastly, I predicted that unless the course set by the previous Council
was changed we would have significantly reduced diversity generating
a monoculture within the Society (PJ, 6 November 2004, p683). The composition
of the newly elected Council says it all.
Colin Minchom
Toronto,
Canada
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PHILIP GREEN, director of education and registration, Royal Pharmaceutical
Society, replies:
To suggest the Society in some way planned the removal
of a proportion of members from the Register is misleading. Members
would, rightly, be alarmed if financial planning mechanisms did not
account for
foreseeable but unavoidable consequences of change, such as that agreed
by Council in 2004 to the fees and fee structure. The rationale underpinning
the fee increase in 2004 has been widely publicised in relation to
the Council’s adoption of a five-year financial strategy.
Although a greater number of pharmacists have retired from the Register
in 2005 than in previous years, 66 per cent of those retiring were
aged 60 years or older,
and nearly 80 per cent of those retiring were from 2004 fee categories that
did not permit them to work as pharmacists in Great Britain. Of the
870 pharmacists
who were removed from the Register for non-payment of fees, over 150 members
have since restored their names to the Register and, although this is not
the purpose of the fee, the £494 penalty fee will have contributed to Society
income. The total number of retirements of members and erasures of names is
in line with the numbers forecast. The financial contribution of those 80 per
cent
of pharmacists who have left the Register is smaller than Dr Minchom assumes,
since many were paying fees at levels lower than the cost of maintaining the
Register or of providing The Pharmaceutical Journal.
As with any robust financial planning and governance process, the Council
will consider its priorities, how to resource these, and make any proposals
regarding
the fees knowing the overall financial standing of the organisation. To suggest
that fee levels are dictated only as a consequence of the number of pharmacists
who leave the Register is to take a one-dimensional view of what is a complex
process. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal