Pharmacists' Defence Association
Pharmacy regulatory input to be limited
Sandra Gidley: why were so many heads in the sand? |
Creating a General Pharmaceutical Council will mean the end of the
profession having a real say in regulation.
So said Sandra Gidley MP at the Pharmacists’ Defence Association
annual conference in Birmingham last weekend, adding: “But there
will be a royal college-type body able to give real professional leadership.”
However, she warned that the proposed royal college was a nebulous idea,
with different people having different ideas of what it should look like.
Mrs Gidley, who is also a pharmacist, was clear that the proposals in
last week’s White Paper to create two separate bodies to take over
the roles of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society should have been foreseen.
“We should have seen the writing on the wall. It was quite clear
from Foster that the Government’s thinking was to have regulatory
bodies which have a lay majority. … Why were so many collective
heads stuck in the sand?” she comented.
Nevertheless, Mrs Gidley believed that splitting the Society would be
in the best interests of the profession. But she was concerned that the
profession has been presented with a model for the split, rather than
consulted about the right way to achieve separation of the regulatory
and representative roles.
Despite this, it was her belief that attention should now focus on the
finer details of the proposal for a GPC, such as its make up. It was
clear that the Government wanted a lay majority. The White Paper allowed
for the possibility of parity between lay and professional members, but
said that any regulator that had parity would be reviewed in 2011.
Regarding lay majorities, Mrs Gidley said: “The evidence is not
there that it works any better from a public protection point of view
or that they appoint members with the right skills.”
She was also of the belief that professional members of the GPC should
be elected, not appointed, because only people who did not cause trouble
would ever be appointed.
She asked: “Do we want yes-men on a regulatory body? The voice
of the profession has to be there loud and clear.”
Turning to other matters, Mrs Gidley reminded participants that the Department
of Health was currently holding consultation meetings on the role of
the responsible pharmacist that would be required in every community
pharmacy and how the issue of absences from the pharmacy and remote supervision
might be handled. She warned that community pharmacy would lose one of
its unique selling points if it could no longer offer walk-in access
to a pharmacist.
Opposing the possibility of remote supervision, Mrs Gidley said that
there was no substitute for seeing and over-hearing customer/staff interactions
in a pharmacy.
“You can write all the protocols you like,” she said. “You
can train your staff as much as you like, but being there and hearing
the interactions you get used to two to three things going on at once
and you step in when something concerns you. It’s the time that
you step in that you know you’ve done a good job, that you’ve
really helped somebody, and, maybe, even saved somebody’s life.”
Now was a good time to lobby MPs about all these things, Mrs Gidley stated.
Pharmacy was on the Westminster agenda. But there should be no whingeing. “Make
the case for how the public and patients will be affected,” she
said. “Don’t expect anything to happen in [Parliamentary]
debate. You have to do the work before the ink has dried,” she
said.
Conflicting roles
Potential for conflict between the roles of superintendent pharmacists
and responsible pharmacists were outlined by Joy Wingfield, professor
of pharmacy law and ethics, University of Nottingham.
Company superintendents are where the legal buck stops and other pharmacists
work under their direction, Professor Wingfield said. So they will want
to control their pharmacists. But pharmacists in the newly created “responsible
pharmacist” role will be responsible for securing the safe and
effective running of individual pharmacies and determine their procedures.
“How will superintendent pharmacists react to the responsible pharmacist’s
judgement? Will a responsible pharmacist have a say over inventory and
promotions?” she asked.
PDA activity levels rising fast
Activity levels at the Pharmacists’ Defence Association are rising
steeply.
PDA chairman Mark Koziol said that the total number of incidents had
risen by 69 per cent to 1,880 in 2006, with a 68 per cent rise in disputes
between employers and employees or locums to 1,007.
Mr Koziol said that the interests of pharmacists were being pushed to
the bottom of company agendas by their need to make a profit.
“This is a sad fact of life, because as organisations get larger
they have to be able to control their workforce and the problem they
end up
with is that we, as professional individuals, have to be able to take
charge of the pharmacy. That’s where a lot of the conflict happens.”
Civil claims against PDA members were also rising — up 79 per cent
to 224 cases in 2006 — with the total of compensation paid up 231
per cent to £207,836. Just one case, expected to be dealt with
this year, was likely to cost the PDA that much.
One of the biggest areas of concern at the PDA was the increase in professional
disciplinary cases involving the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. These
were up 240 per cent to 635 cases in 2006.
“This is a shocking development and is one of the reasons we are
so keen at the PDA that the Society should split,” Mr Koziol said.
John Murphy, PDA director, said that pharmacists now stood a 1 in 44
chance that they would face action by their professional regulator.
This contrasted with 1 in 53 for doctors, 1 in 1,180 for dentists and
1 in 256 for nurses.
Mr Murphy also warned that pharmacy employers had started to complain
to the Society about staff who raised employment disputes.
Two such complaints had now been made, seemingly in the hope of getting
a professional disciplinary ruling against the pharmacist that could
be used to bolster the employer’s case at an employment tribunal.
Both had failed. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal