The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7432 p773
23/30 December 2006

Society summary

Inspectors to have more power?

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Infringements Committee wants the Society's inspectors to have power to resolve many problems at the local level rather than report them to the Society centrally.

At the Society’s December Council meeting, during debate on the decriminalisation of dispensing errors (PJ, 16 December, p753), Infringements Committee chairman Phillida Entwistle said that the committee had talked during a recent policy day about empowering the inspectorate. The committee believed that the inspectorate was one of the Society’s great assets and wanted to make better use of it.

Dr Entwistle said that many cases low down on the committee’s agenda could be dealt with by the inspectorate locally, subject to the Council’s support and the overcoming of any legal barriers that might be raised. That would result in significantly fewer cases being referred to the committee, resulting in less stress for the pharmacists involved and significant savings on the Society’s resources, which could then be redirected to more important cases.

Dr Entwistle said that the committee wished to take the issue further early in 2007 and put proposals before the Council.

Michael Schofield agreed that the inspectorate was one of Society’s great assets but suggested that it was not realistic to ask the inspectors to add more of a professional adviser role to their obligations as inspectors when each of them covered something like 500 pharmacies. There might be a need, with Government support, to increase the registration fee and invest in more inspectors. He flagged that up in recognition of the importance of what the inspectors already did.