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Letters to the Editor
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Retention fees
Trailblazers should not be disadvantaged
From Professor C. A. Mackie, MRPharmS, and others
We would like to add our voice to the many
letters and the PJ editorial (13 January, p36) expressing concern on the decision by the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society that all qualified independent pharmacist prescribers must pay
an annual fee of £35 to renew the independent prescriber annotation
to their registration in addition to the one-off administration fee of £35
and their annual retention fee.
Those pharmacists who are undertaking prescribing programmes are trailblazers
for the profession and should not be financially disadvantaged in this
way. We are concerned that the decision of the Society to pass the administrative
cost of maintaining a register to the individual pharmacist could act as
a deterrent to other pharmacists who may be interested in undertaking the
exciting challenge offered to the profession in the form of independent
prescribing.
Like other correspondents we note that the Nursing and Midwifery Council
charges new independent nurse prescribers a one-off fee of £25. The
Health Professions Council does not charge for the annotation of its members
as supplementary prescribers. Readers will also by now know that nurses
pay an annual retention fee of £43 and allied health professionals
registered with the HPC currently pay £60 a year. Doctors, who pay
an annual retention fee of £290 to the General Medical Council, do
not pay additional fees for recognition by the GMC of any specialist qualification.
We hope other pharmacists will join us in asking the Society to reconsider
the decision to impose this fee as a matter of urgency.
Clare Mackie
Trudy Thomas
Fiona Stephens
Prescribing Programme Teaching Team
Medway School of Pharmacy
Chatham, Kent |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal