| · Registration examination
· Emergency supplies (2)
· Hospital pharmacy
· National boards (2)
· Reciprocity
· CPD
· Grandparent clauses
Letters to the Editor
|
Reciprocity
Society should delay the move at least!
From Dr D. M. L. Branford, MRPharmS
Having recently enjoyed the opportunities provided by the reciprocity
agreements between the UK, Australia and New Zealand, I am amazed that
the Royal Pharmaceutical Society can be considering
ending them at this
time (PJ, 2 July, p10). Such a move should at least be delayed but preferably
abandoned.
Antipodean pharmacists provide a tremendous resource at a time of pharmacist
shortage. It is difficult to imagine why we want to lose the services of
about 300 pharmacists. The Society will also lose significant registration
revenue, surely enough to pay a decent lawyer to hold off any imagined
challenge to such an agreement.
For many people who live in Australia and New Zealand, coming to the UK
for an extended period is a normal part of life. This overseas experience
is increasingly becoming a two-way event as many of our UK citizens enjoy
time in the antipodes. This exchange enriches all our lives and provides
valuable pharmacy-related work experience. Future travellers will prefer
to work in bars and restaurants rather than incur the costs and time involved
with the oversees pharmacists’ assessment programme.
Rather than impose such draconian measures on our antipodean pharmacists,
perhaps the Society should seriously look at introducing reciprocity agreements
for other countries that can provide high-quality English-speaking pharmacists,
with a clinical orientation to their work.
We seem to have ended up with a completely back to front set of agreements.
We have to accept pharmacists from countries that are members of the EU
for almost immediate registration even though their skill may be minimal
and their health care system totally different. We will be unable to accept
pharmacists from countries with close educational links and similar heath
care systems to our own. At a time when so many nurses, doctors and other
professionals from abroad are working in the NHS, restricting pharmacists
in this way appears absurd.
As a chief pharmacist of an NHS trust I am aware that we have an almost
unquenchable need for clinical pharmacists. Primary care trusts and hospital
trusts are creating clinical pharmacist posts faster than we can produce
the pharmacists to fill them. Even with the current pharmacy school expansion,
any possibility of an increase in available clinical pharmacists is still
at least a decade away. Pharmacists from the antipodes and other countries,
where the education and training is clinically orientated, provide ideal
candidates. The current changes to the reciprocity arrangements should
wait until then at least.
David Branford
Chief Pharmacist
Kingsway Hospital,
Derby |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal