Society sets timetable for consultation with membership over future
How the Royal Pharmaceutical Society plans to engage with its members over the next six months about a future professional body has now been outlined.
An independent chairman will be appointed by the Society as soon as possible
to elicit the views of members and key stakeholder groups on the role
of a professional body, said the Society’s President Hemant Patel
at a press briefing last week.
The independent chairman will not have any connections with pharmacy,
will be of sufficiently high standing in society and will be recognised
as an authoritative voice by members, the Government and other bodies,
he said. The chairman will be supported by a secretariat and will take
written and oral submissions from pharmacy organisations and individuals.
The Society also plans to commission research into members’ views
about a professional body through a tender process later this month.
The research is intended to identify key themes and issues
surrounding the needs, wants and expectations of the profession and the
role of a professional body. It is likely to take on board the views
of a random sample of pharmacists.
“There are potentially at least 47,000 views and to try to get
a consensus is not going to be easy. But there are already some clear
themes emerging
and I want to be confident that we have done all we can to understand
not [just] what [the members] want but why they want it,” said
Mr Patel. There will be an update on the research at the British Pharmaceutical
Conference in September and the full results, which will feed into the
independent review, will be published in late
autumn.
A formal consultation with individual members will start around the turn
of the year after the Society and the members have had time to digest
the findings from both the independent review and the commissioned research,
said Mr Patel.
The Society is also writing to the Department of Health to raise concerns
over the cost of the split, the financial viability of a future professional
body and the resources available within the Government and the regulators
to support implementation of the regulation White Paper.
“Only three years ago, the Government encouraged the Society to
have an integrated role and now it has changed its mind. We accept the
need to
ask for a separation … but it must financially support the split,” said
Mr Patel. “We were led down the garden path by the Government.
It gave us a new Charter. It cannot walk away from that,” he added.
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