Let the Society be preserved
As the future for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society unfolds, and the implications of establishing a General Pharmaceutical Council and “a body akin to a royal college” for pharmacy sink in, The
Journal wonders whether the Government understands what it is doing and realises that, rather than giving the profession a wonderful present, it has handed pharmacy a Pandora's box.
About 75 years ago, the then government gave the Society the responsibility
to regulate the profession. Over the years, the emphasis for the Society
gradually shifted away from professional matters to regulatory ones — a
process that accelerated over the past five years, post-Bristol and post-Shipman.
By definition, regulation is not popular and the Society’s image
among some members has suffered as a result. This poisoned chalice will
pass to the GPC, which will probably be even less popular than the Society
if the expectations outlined in this week’s Broad
spectrum (p521)
are realised.
Once the Society has been stripped of regulation and its attendant activities,
it will be instructive to learn what is left behind. At the moment many
pharmacy bodies are interested in joining forces with the Society to
develop that much flaunted royal college-type body, although some
have reservations about the part the Society may play (p513).
These reservations
were echoed by Lord Hunt when he spoke to members
of the All-Party Pharmacy Group last week (p513). Lord Hunt is, allegedly,
a friend of pharmacy but his remark that the Society is not capable of
evolving into this new body is out of order (unless the Government is
prepared to put its money where its mouth is and agree to fund the establishment
of both bodies). It is one thing for chief pharmaceutical officers to
criticise the Society’s record; it is quite another for the responsible
minister, who has the future of the profession in his hands, to make
his views clear in such a forum. He should have told the Society first.
Who is to say that a new body would do any better than the Society, once
it is divested of regulation? Who is to say that, once the dust has settled,
the different pharmacy bodies have put forward their preferences for
what they want a professional body to do for them, and the Society adjusts
its governance arrangements to reflect those interests, it could not
do a very good job for the profession?
The profession should strive to adopt the best features of the medical
royal colleges, as well as some of the professional activities undertaken
by the British Medical Association and other royal colleges such as the
Royal College of Radiographers. There is no need to tear up 166 years
of history and replace it with something — as yet of no substance — that
looks good on paper but may not be that relevant to the future of pharmacy
or, for that matter, sustainable. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society exists.
It has a strong national and international reputation. Let it be preserved
and its foundations built on, even if its functions and responsibilities
are modernised.
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