Process agreed for consultations on draft guidance documents
The Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has approved a process for consulting on draft professional standards and guidance documents to supplement the proposed revised Code of Ethics.
At the December Council
meeting, the Council agreed the following:
• Consultations should be undertaken for six to eight weeks
• Consultation should be primarily by electronic means, with paper copies
of the consultation available on request
• Consultations should be promoted widely to the profession and other
key stakeholders
• Consultations should ask a small number of straightforward questions
relevant to the document being consulted on
• Draft standards or guidance documents should be approved for consultation
by the Law and Ethics Committee
• The outcomes of the consultation should be reported to the Law and
Ethics Committee, together with an amended document for the committee’s
approval
• Feedback on how the responses have been used should be made public
• The Council should approve the final draft of the document before publication
The development of the consultation process follows the Council’s
decision to move towards a new Code of Ethics based on seven basic principles
of ethical practice, which will be supplemented by more detailed standards
and guidance drawn up for specific areas of practice or for particular
professional responsibilities.
The Council agreed that the consultation process as proposed would enable
the profession and other key stakeholders to have input into the standards
that the profession would be judged against. It would also help to identify
any issues before they became problems.
The process also endeavoured to ensure that guidance documents could
be published in a timely manner, while still allowing input from the
profession and the public.
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