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Letters to the Editor
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English pharmacy board
Let the English board’s voice be heard
From Mr C. Morris, MRPharmS
I said that I would listen to anyone that had a view regarding the future
of pharmacy and, now that I have been elected to the English Pharmacy Board
of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, I stand by that. I believe that elected
officials are the employees of the electorate and I am nowhere near conceited
enough to think I have the answers for all pharmacy’s problems so
I am asking for pharmacists’ input.
Pharmacists can e-mail me at cmorris@epb.hotmail.co.uk. I also have a website
at www.pharmacistance.co.uk, which has links to most of the major pharmaceutical
sites and I plan to have links to all of the topics to be discussed at
the EPB meetings so that they can be seen beforehand and also the minutes
of past meetings. I am a moderator of www.pharmacy-forum.co.uk,
a forum for the discussion of pharmacy, and a regular poster on www.locumvoice.co.uk,
a forum for discussing locum issues run by my fellow EPB member Lindsey
Gilpin. Finally, I am a member of www.private-Rx.com,
an e-mail discussion group that has been running for several years. Pharmacists
can get a message
to me at any of these places and might even see debates that they can and
want to contribute to.
There are several pharmacy groups that I plan to contact but if anyone
thinks that their group needs a say, then they should contact me.
I believe that part of the problem at the moment is that the profession
of pharmacy is becoming ever more multipartite. We have a number of groups
representing different areas and calls for more every day. I think that
a lot of pharmacists are disillusioned with the direction in which the
profession is moving and they want a voice to be heard and I cannot blame
them for wanting to form support groups for their own little or even not
so little niche but I think that we have to pull together as a profession
now regardless of the area of the profession that we represent.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society as we know it may split. If this comes
to pass a group may be set up to support and represent pharmacists and
the profession as a whole — something which has seemed to me to be
sadly lacking for a long time.
Maybe this group will be the EPB, maybe not, but I would like to think
that the EPB could be a group that represents pharmacists anyway. Whether
this will be possible I really do not know but I am going to try to push
for this. I hope pharmacists wish us all luck with this as I do not believe
that anyone has put up for election to this board to do the profession
down.
Regardless of how the Society’s functions might split and regardless
of the name given to the representative arm I believe that we all need
to pull together and act as a single professional front.
To this end I ask again, let the EPB be a voice for pharmacists regardless
of background and I hope to hear from pharmacists soon.
Chris Morris
English Pharmacy Board Member
Royal Pharmaceutical Society |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal