Meetings

British Pharmaceutical Conference 2006

Harriet Adcock covers the response from Hemant Patel, President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to health minister Andy Burnham’s address

The 2006 British Pharmaceutical Conference and Exhibition “Personalised medicine in healthcare” took place at Manchester International Convention Centre from 4 to 6 September

BPC 2006 reports

Pharmacists' skills being recognised as key to delivery of modern NHS

Pharmacists' skills and experience are, more than ever before, being recognised as a resource that is key to the delivery of a modernised national health service, Hemant Patel, President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, told conference participants.

“At a strategic level, pharmacists have an enormous input to make into the management of the twelve and a half billion pounds of investment in medicines in the NHS,” he said.

Mr Patel assured health minister Andy Burnham, who had addressed the conference earlier, that across all sectors of the profession the care and safety of patients and the public was, and always had been, the prime concern of pharmacists. But he argued that pharmacists needed to be more involved in consultation processes and allowed to be more engaged in the delivery of services.

“As a profession, pharmacists have long known that we can make an even greater contribution to patient care. We are an aspirational profession with the energy and enthusiasm for delivering improvement.”

Mr Patel argued that, with the right support, pharmacists could and would deliver new models of care to patients. However, he said that neither the Royal Pharmaceutical Society nor the Government should underestimate the support that pharmacists would need to deliver their full potential. “Pharmacists will need the sustained support of Government and its commitment to shape health care delivery across and beyond traditional boundaries.” He added that, at a local NHS level, there needs to be a willingness to engage across professional boundaries by those responsible for health planning and commissioning. “In England there is evidence of only limited engagement at the primary care trust level,” he said.

Mr Patel expressed the fear that public access to pharmacy services could suffer from the establishment of both new 100-hour pharmacies and centralised primary care centres.

“A balance needs to be struck between the legitimate desire to create longer opening hours and centralised GP services, and maintaining local access to health care particularly for those who find travelling difficult,” he said.

Other concerns related to the current financial difficulties faced by the NHS and the fact that some non-executive directors of primary care organisations have little understanding of pharmacy.