A historic document
It has taken so long to arrive it is hard to believe that it is finally here, but the draft Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians Order 2006 (under the Health Act 1999) — popularly known as the Section 60 Order — has now been published and a 12-week consultation period has begun.
In some senses the end of the journey is now in sight, a journey that
started in February 2002 when, in its preliminary response to Government
demands to modernise all regulatory bodies, the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society asked members through the pages of The Journal: “What are
the options for the future?”
Now is not the time to go over the battles that followed but to be glad
that the details of the Order are finally in the public domain. Change
and gain rarely come without some pain, and the reasons for all the upheavals
since 2002 may become a little more apparent to Society members.
The next stage in the modernisation process was the (eventual) granting
of the new Royal Charter. It was sealed in November 2004 and came into
force at the beginning of last year.
Since then, the Society has been waiting (and waiting) for the Department
of Health to produce the Section 60 Order so that the profession can
understand the place of the new Charter in the broader context of health
professional regulation.
The delay has done nobody any favours — least of all those members
of the profession, for example, who may be less harshly treated as a
result of new ways of tackling fitness to practise. Let us just remark
that the inefficiency of the Government (ministers and civil servants
alike) has been a disgrace.
The Section 60 Order documentation is weighty. For those members of the
Society who have the energy, there is the consultation document and the
draft Order itself — 114 pages together — to wade through,
digest and then comment upon if they wish. For less engaged individuals,
the Society has prepared a 15-page briefing document, highlighting those
dimensions that it believes may not serve pharmacists or pharmacy technicians
well. Also, in this week’s Journal there is a four-page pull-out
section (PDF 70K) which gives an outline of the main issues
that pharmacists should try to consider.
In addition, over the next few weeks, The Journal will be looking at
a handful of issues in an accessible way.
Since the Order will supersede the Pharmacy Act 1954 it is, as the President
of the Society has said, a historic document. Now that resolution is
in sight, let us hope that Mr Foster’s review, which is taking
a comparative look at the regulation of a number of health professions,
does not create new battles.
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