The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7428 p637
25 November 2006

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· Section 60 Order (2)
· Supermarket pharmacy
· Patient safety
· Controlled drugs (2)
· Drug misuse
· The profession
· The Council (2)
· The Society
· Community pharmacy

Letters to the Editor

The Society

A declaration on non-practising status

From Mr D. C. Shenton, MRPharmS

Bruce Rhodes believes that lately the profession has been deprived unnecessarily of many distinguished pharmacists (PJ, 11 November, p574) and goes on to say that he, too, will leave the Register this year. What a shame that the rest of us are now to be deprived of him and of his trenchant comments sent by runner from far Gloucestershire.

This December he will be spared the duty of signing a declaration of non-practising status. That signing, of what should be a serious undertaking, will continue to be deeply flawed by the lack of useful definitions of what activities are, and are not, practising. I had assumed that the draft Section 60 Order would address the matter. But I learnt from Society staff that Parliamentary protocol prevents any clarification in the Order of the catch-all definition of practising we now have. My long-standing interest in this subject is waning and will probably have died by the time promised new guidance is published by the Society. In my view, the existing guidance is divorced from real life — it may well encourage affected members to see the declaration as just a formality.

David Shenton
Staines, Middlesex

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