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Letters to the Editor
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White Paper
Member research will be carried out
From Dr S. J. Ambler, MRPharmS
Barry Shooter (PJ, 9 June, p672) called on the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society to survey members so that their views can be used to help inform
Council thinking regarding the future of the organisation.
Member research was one of the items discussed at the June Council meeting,
where it was agreed that a tender exercise would be undertaken in order
to appoint a company to carry out this work. It is expected that an appointment
will be made in July and that the research exercise will take place over
the summer months.
More details will appear in the PJ (see p693) and on the Society’s
website (www.rpsgb.org).
Sue Ambler
Acting Director of Education and Registration
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
Write to your MP
From Mr R. Gartside, FRPharmS
It was an interesting letter from Lord
Hunt (PJ, 19 May, p583), who
is concerned about your leading
article arguing that the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society must be preserved (PJ, 5 May, p512).
Lord Hunt wrote: “The Society has contributed immensely to safe
and effective patient care over many years. … I want to see the profession
build on these solid foundations … but there should be no doubt that
the royal college will be a new body.” I would suggest that the
only possible interpretation of those words is that the Society should
cease to exist and be replaced by a new institution. Why? Why wantonly
destroy an ancient and honourable institution which is satisfactorily
performing its work and attempt to replace it with a new and untried
body, against the wishes of the members of the profession.
We may all from time to time lambaste the Society for what we perceive
as its (fairly minor) failings, but this is surely the reaction of loving
children who think their parent could do better. The only suggestions
that the profession has ever made is that regulation should be isolated
from representation because one has perhaps figured too strongly and
the other not strongly enough. Destroying the Society has been on no
one’s agenda.
So why does Lord Hunt wish to destroy the Society? Let us try to put
ourselves in his place. From his point of view the Society is a minor
irritant, indeed, a minor body, which occasionally — but not that
strenuously — opposes changes that he wishes to make. Other royal
colleges, however, are a different kettle of fish. To a large extent
the medical royal colleges run the NHS and they must be a major irritant
to those politicians who believe in centralised control. But they are
too respected and too powerful and have too good a press to be attacked
by frontal assault. So perhaps one should begin with a minor, but ancient,
professional organisation, “modernise” that out of existence
and then use this as a precedent and threat to emasculate the others.
I am speculating but I have no doubt that a “modernised” royal
college of pharmacy would be pressured to admit non-pharmacists to membership
(although it should be borne in mind that a pharmacist is legally defined
as a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society). Admit others to full
membership of a new body, legally describe them as pharmacists, and you
dilute the profession’s expertise and knowledge, undoubtedly to
the detriment of patient safety. But the politicians can say they “have
invested, and doubled the number of pharmacists in the NHS”.
In Pitt’s words, “this is our last retrenchment, we must
defend it or perish”. May I suggest that all members write to their
member of Parliament, as I already have done.
R. Gartside
Caernarfon, Gwynedd
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal