Exceptional challenges
Hemant Patel was elected
unopposed for a third term of office as President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society at the Council meeting earlier this week (p687). Although such a situation is not unprecedented, it
is rare. The last time a president served for three years was Walter
Deacon between 1939 and 1942, and the longest-serving president, Michael
Carteighe, was in office for 13 years between 1883 and 1896. In recent
years, it had become custom and practice for presidents to undertake
one or two years in office, although the maximum continuous term is
three years. However, with the uncertainty currently facing the profession
over its future structures there is sense in retaining the same president
to see the first phase completed.
Although Mr Patel is not dealing with a world war, unlike Mr Deacon,
there are exceptional challenges for him in the year ahead. He has to
lead the profession towards utopia, to find a role for the Society that
attracts as wide a range of pharmacists as possible and to ensure that
other pharmacy groups as well as individual pharmacists will be satisfied
with the outcome. How straightforward it will be for his successor to
finish the job in 12 months’ time will be Mr Patel’s legacy
to the profession. This is no mean task.
Members of the profession may think that they have not been as privy
to the Society’s and Council’s deliberations following the
publication of the White Paper covering the regulation of health professions
in February as they would have wished — but this veil of secrecy
was demanded by the Government and Lord Carter of Coles whose working
party has now put
down some markers for the way forward (PJ, 19 May,
p573).
The veil has now been lifted, and the Society and Council should be able
to outline a strategy for the immediate future, explain how they are
going to engage the membership, give a timetable of what they intend
to do and suggest what the outcome might be. Although the Society is
not alone in having to reorder itself on the coat tails of the White
Paper, it faces a much more fundamental restructuring than any other
health profession, and there is a huge amount of work to be done.
As the President said in his acceptance speech: “Most precious
… is the relationship with the members. By the time of the British
Pharmaceutical Conference in September we must come up with a plan to
better support our members, old and new, and win their trust so that
we can become a more authoritative voice for the members of this Society
in the wider world.” Members of the profession should recognise
the effort that this will entail, stop looking at what it perceives the
Society has not done for them in the past and come together for the future.
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