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· Safety
· The profession
· Controlled drugs
Letters to the Editor
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The profession
Blame weak leadership for low status
From Mr K. T. Farrar, MRPharmS
The Broad spectrum piece by Gidman and Hassell (PJ, 12 November, p604)
and your accompanying
editorial (p594) suggest that the “feminisation” of
the profession has led to a lowering of its status. If this is true it
is, perhaps, more an indictment of the external world than of the profession.
As a hospital pharmacist I have had the privilege of working with a large
number of able female pharmacists, many of whom were in senior roles in
the service.
Any loss of status of the profession is less to do with gender than with
a lack of leadership. Nursing is largely female and yet nothing has prevented
it from gaining an increasingly important position in the health-care world.
Why? I suspect it is largely due to the leadership of the Royal College
of Nursing. Pharmacy on the other hand seems split by interest groups and
factions that steer the profession in multiple directions at once and by
a professional body that seems intent on self-destruction.
The issues that face the NHS are many. Acute trusts are overspent and looking
to cut staff numbers, primary care trusts have insufficient funds to pay
for potentially life-saving treatments and patient safety is of such a
concern that the Government has established the National Patient Safety
Agency to focus attention on the issue. What is the pharmacy leadership
response to this agenda? Apparent inaction.
Pharmacy has a lot to offer the NHS. Medicines management activities can
help control drug expenditure as well as reduce the risk of patients receiving
inappropriate or poorly monitored medicines.
Sadly, the leadership of the profession, which is not female dominated,
seems to lack a vision of the real role of pharmacists: a focus on care
of patients and on ensuring optimal therapy with medicines. Delivery of
benefits to patients will bring the recognition and rewards we all desire,
as the rise in status of the nursing profession clearly illustrates.
Keith Farrar
Wirral, Merseyside
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