Without regulation Society will be a new body
When the regulatory function is removed from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the General Pharmaceutical Council is established, the Society will be a new and different body, the Society's President Hemant Patel said in a statement issued this week. “Freed from the constraints of regulation it can be more responsive to its membership,” he added.
The statement came in response to a letter published in last week’s
Journal from health minister Lord
Hunt (PJ, 19 May, p583), in which the
minister said that there should be no doubt that the proposed royal college
would be a new body.
The minister also said that professional leadership was primarily a matter
for the profession itself. “We agree with this wholeheartedly,” the
President said. “It will be for the profession to decide the shape,
functions and membership of any new professional leadership body.”
In the statement, the President also called on members to contribute
their ideas about the functions that they would like to see the Society
perform in the future. “We will be widening the debate in the profession
and will be publishing a number of papers over the next few weeks based
on the information that we submitted to Lord Carter’s working party.
These will demonstrate both the potential for improvement and an assessment
of the risks involved — particularly if the process is poorly thought
through or hurried.”
A News feature considers recommendations made by Lord Carter of Coles
last week about professional leadership and gathers some early
reaction to that and Lord Hunt’s letter (see p604).
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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