The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7449 p484
28 April 2007

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What are you going to bring to the royal college party for pharmacy?

By Jonathan Buisson

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the suggested royal college for pharmacy and what its functions should be. There is also a lot of talk about how the college should be constituted — how it should be made up from all the different pharmacy organisations that currently exist.

Another way to look at the royal college might be to say: “Pharmacy is having a party, everyone is invited as long as they can bring something with them.” So what might people want to bring to the pharmacy party?

Members Whichever way the college is constituted, and however inclusive or exclusive it is, it will need members to survive. So perhaps one of the first questions must be “How many friends are you bringing?”. In my view, this suggests that we should have a “the more the merrier” approach. A wide and diverse range of pharmacy groups already exists, and many of them are open to more than pharmacists.

The bigger the party, the more the noise and the more notice people will take of it. However, I do not underestimate the degree of feeling that there is around this issue. I suspect that a few people will be found outside fighting in the flowerbeds about it. I just hope that we will all still be able to be friends the following morning.

This is too big an opportunity to waste by going over old feuds and trying to settle scores.

Money Members mean money, but they are not the only income stream for a college. There are all sorts of other ways of bringing in money: donations, collaborations, research grants, accreditation fees and many others will have to be explored. An organisation without money is not going to achieve much for either its members or the wider public.

Buildings There has got to be somewhere to have the party. In this respect, pharmacy is lucky. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society already owns a sizeable and well located property in the centre of London, a valuable asset that will have to form a core part of at least the early years of the college. There are other properties owned by the pharmacy family, a legacy of our long history. Together all of these could give the college a good base to start from.

Staff Organisations achieve what they do through their permanent staff and any hired supporters. There are a lot of pharmacy organisations, some of which have paid employees. There is also a lot of duplication in pharmacy, and bringing this pool of talent together might allow more of them to get on with more specialist work, rather than just doing the same thing many times.

Structures Many of the things talked about for the proposed college, variously entitled “academies”, “faculties”, “specialist groups” or “devolved boards”, already exist within pharmacy. A lot of hard work has gone into setting these up from scratch, getting the membership and governance right.

All this experience will be useful in getting the pharmacy party off on the right foot. Let us all learn from each other’s mistakes rather than make each other’s mistakes.

History A sense of history is an important part of belonging. It is about knowing who your friends are and why you want to go to their party, remembering the good times (and the bad) you have shared in the past. It is like looking through old photographs and sharing the memories.

Whatever emerges for the future, the 160-plus years of the history of pharmacy must not be lost along the way.

Publicity and publications It is not going to be much of a party if no one knows about it beforehand. Others must know about it, and feel that they should be coming along too. Spreading the word about what you are doing, and why, is crucial, both to gaining membership and gaining recognition. Those whose talents lie in this area need to be made welcome.

And after a good party, what if no one can recall at least some of what happened? Publications are vital for recording history as it is made and for keeping the profession together, through a sharing of knowledge. They are also a vital source of income and need to be guarded jealously for this reason.

Expertise All parties need experts, whether they are choosing the drinks, cooking the food or getting the music going. Pharmacy has lots of experts and expertise in its ranks. This needs to be captured and all sorts of different expertise will need to be recognised, formally or informally, within any new structures.

Activism Sometimes you have got to fight for your right to party. If you want to push the boundaries or fight off unwelcome attentions you need to speak out, lobby and influence. Any Royal College has to have a shared vision of what it wants for all its members, how it plans to get there, and what it is going to do about the many barriers that will lie in the way. It needs people who want to stand up and who will make a fuss until they get what we all want.

Devolution One party for the whole country is not enough these days. You have got to make sure that everyone in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is seen to be having their share of the fun, too.

The future of pharmacy is not what was once predicted. Looking around at the moment, almost everything is changing, or is going to change soon. This makes it a good time for pharmacy to be changing the structures at the centre in order to produce something that can both shape and support what we want from the future. We want to produce a body fit for the 21st century, able to be flexible and adapt at a time of great change for us all. We need something that will give us all a shared vision for the future and which we all want to belong to.

Think about what we could create from all the resources at the disposal of pharmacy. We are used to making the best of a bad job. Think what we could do if we all got together to make a good job of it.
The Society is holding a meeting on 30 April to discuss many of these issues. I urge all those attending to make this a positive time. I am a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council for England, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man and a member of the English Pharmacy Board. I want to bring activism and publicity to the party. What are you going to bring?

RSVP.