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Letters to the Editor
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The profession
Excitement and uncertainty
From Dr B. P. Curwain, MRPharmS
As a number of my fellow Council election candidates have stated, this
is an exciting time for pharmacy. However, with excitement and new developments
inevitably come uncertainty, stress and worry for many people. That is
natural when any group is faced with changes over which they have no
more than partial control. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society must, therefore,
continue to develop its activities to support pharmacists as they take
on new challenges.
The profession can influence things, but it is ultimately accountable
to the community it serves, through the elected government. The practice
of community pharmacy is a mixture of commerce and health care provision.
In any event, for pharmacists in several branches of the profession,
the NHS is our main customer or our direct employer. Both common sense
and business sense dictate that we must be responsive to its needs while
also ensuring that we make the most of our statutory and all other opportunities
to provide advice and shape policy.
On the Section 60 Order, there is not much to add to the comments made
by Douglas Simpson and Pradip
Patel (PJ, 22 April, p474). It clearly
needs some amendments but it seems to me that, in general, the Government
is not unhappy with the activities of the Society in this respect. All
sides have acknowledged that we do need a more flexible system than the
purely punitive one that has existed up until now.
I make no comment on the invalidation of the first set of ballot papers
in the current election other than to say that, rather than concentrating
on blame and recrimination, I hope that the relevant parts of the Society
will look at their processes and internal communications to minimise
the chances of such a thing recurring. At the outset, candidates were
warned against negative campaigning. So far as I am aware the campaign
has been conducted in a healthy spirit of debate and discussion. I thank
my fellow candidates for this. We have posted things regularly as asked
on the Young Pharmacists Group website and most of us have written the
two letters each to The Journal that the election rules allow.
Miall James (PJ, 22 April, p474) questions the current election system,
noting that it is hard for candidates from minority constituencies to
get elected. I am not standing for election just to bang the drum for
primary care trust pharmacists but to use my knowledge and experience
for the benefit of the whole profession. It would, however, be interesting
to have some figures on how many candidates on average each voter votes
for. We would then know how voters actually behave.
I hope very much to be successful in this election but for the moment
will simply wish us all luck and leave it to the electorate.
Brian Curwain
Council Election Candidate
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal