The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7359 p102
23 July 2005

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Categorising membership more
The value of first aid in an emergency more

Categorising membership

As part of The Journal’s contribution to the debate about the Registers and how different categories of Royal Pharmaceutical Society members might be treated, we commissioned a News feature (p109) to find out what regulators of other health professions do — and it makes for instructive reading.

The feature reveals that most other bodies contacted offer some, but not identical, concessions. Nevertheless, when Society Council members come to their deliberations at their next meeting at the beginning of August, they may find in the feature some pointers to the way the Society might define its Registers in future.

For example, the General Medical Council is reorganising its register at the moment and, under the new terms, doctors will be granted a licence to practise that allows them certain privileges, such as the right to prescribe prescription-only medicines in the UK. GMC-registered doctors working overseas, those who are retired and those not requiring a licence to practise can pay a reduced fee of £190 as opposed to the £290 payable by licensed doctors.

Retired nurses and midwives who are no longer practising do not have to pay the Nursing and Midwifery Council anything to stay on its register. However, at the other end of the spectrum, dentists are either deemed to be fit for practice or they are not dentists, and there are no separate categories or reduced fees for particular groups, such as those working overseas or the retired. Members have to pay the full whack if they want to stay on the register. Similarly, the General Optical Council has no separate register for members who work part-time — if they practise they have to pay the full fee and undertake the same continuing education and training as members who work full-time.

Whether or not the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence decides at some future point that all health professionals must be registered under the same terms remains to be seen. Until then, it seems that anything goes.

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The value of first aid in an emergency

Last week’s issue of the BMJ contains some moving articles by various doctors who attended the victims of the bus bomb just outside BMA House in London’s Tavistock Square on 7 July. One writer, assistant editor of the journal, who admitted that he had not been in practice for some years and was no longer registered with the General Medical Council, still rolled up his sleeves and went to help the injured. It seems that he was able to provide top-class first aid, and he underlined the point that — in an emergency — anybody with some knowledge and skill may be needed. Despite the fact that most pharmacists will never be called on to deal with an atrocity on the scale of the London bombings, those who are not trained in first aid might like to consider the value of undertaking a course soon.

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