Science funding restricts pharmacy education, warns the Society
Continued funding of pharmacy degrees as science, rather than clinical, degrees by the Higher Education Funding Council for England is likely to create a pinch point in pharmacy education, the House of Commons’ Health Select Committee has been told.
Giving evidence to the committee’s inquiry into workforce planning on 15 June, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s director of corporate and strategic development, Rob Darracott, told the committee: “As pharmacists get into more clinical roles there is a question mark about how that training is funded, particularly the exposure of pharmacy students and students at the preregistration level to patients and how that is facilitated. If you just have a science funding stream, there is little provision within that for clinically based training.”
Mr Darracott also told the committee that the Society was in the final stages of preparing a workforce planning model that confirmed that there was a shortfall in the provision of pharmacists. However, he warned that the model did not provide any answers to the problem. Instead, it supported the need for recently proposed legislative changes and showed that different ways of doing existing tasks needed to be found.
At an earlier stage in the committee’s inquiry, the Society submitted written evidence that identified an emerging gap between demand and supply.
That evidence, prepared by Society head of research and development, Sue Ambler, said that pharmacists were coping with the gap by working extra hours beyond their contracts — the average is four hours per week — and dealing with prescriptions faster than set down in official safety levels. They were also cutting back non-core activities, reducing services and substituting pharmacists with pharmacy technicians and assistants. |
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