The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7469 p294
15 September 2007

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British Pharmaceutical Conference 2007

National templates will support role for pharmacy in influenza immunisation

Community pharmacists would be able to play a larger role in influenza immunisation through the development of national templates, Ben Bradshaw, Minister of State for Health Services, told participants at the conference.

Mr Bradshaw described the progress some primary care organisations had made in commissioning trained and accredited pharmacists to administer seasonal flu vaccines. He said the Government was planning to publish a national template service specification to support primary care organisations in involving pharmacists in their immunisation programmes to increase uptake and improve access.

The Government was also looking at the role pharmacists could play in tackling pandemic flu, he added. “In the case of pandemic flu, it is likely that community pharmacy will bear considerable demand from the public for advice, information and access to prescribed and over-the-counter medicines. We are working with the profession to develop guidance on how best pharmacy can contribute.”

Mr Bradshaw also said that sexual health was an area in which the Government was looking to help expand the role of pharmacists. “Pharmacies and pharmacists are already successful in providing aspects of sexual health care,” he said. Pharmacies were a primary source of emergency hormonal contraception and there was growing evidence for their role in chlamydia screening, he added.

“People like going to pharmacies for these services because of their accessibility and convenient opening hours. We want to build on this … and will work with the profession to ensure robust standard setting, appropriate training and competency assessment.”

He also praised pharmacists’ commitment to the communities they served. This had, he said, been demonstrated most recently by the way pharmacies responded and adapted in areas affected by this summer’s floods. “I twice visited a pharmacy in Gloucester that had been flooded out and was immensely impressed by the professionalism and flexibility they demonstrated in maintaining patient services,” he said.

One area in which pharmacists needed to put more effort and make more progress was, he said, with IT. “Progress is being made on the deployment of the electronic prescription service,” he stressed. Sixty-eight per cent of GP practices have had their systems upgraded for release 1, he said.

“However,” he added, “pharmacies are behind, with only 57 per cent upgraded for release 1. I urge you to take this opportunity to establish the infrastructure within your pharmacy and get familiar with the technology before release 2 goes live and the use of the service becomes business-critical for you and your patients. Release 2 will soon be a reality.”

New body must ensure Britain is the safest place to take medicines

The new professional body for pharmacy must seek to ensure Britain is the safest place in the world to take medicines, Hemant Patel, President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, told conference participants.

This should be the primary purpose of the body, he said, and from that basis the profession could reflect on the Society’s current strengths and where it needed to improve.

“The Society already excels in education, training and continuing professional development support, practice research, publications, and in our branch structure and benevolence,” he said. “But, just as I appreciate our strengths, I have voiced the criticisms of our members where the Society must do more.”

The Society needed to do more to support professional development and raise standards, to develop leadership skills, and new clinical roles and roles in public health.

It also needed to do more, he said, to support the Society’s branches, pharmacy students and retired members and to include many of the organisations that were involved with pharmacy. He added: “My vision is of a self-confident profession practising in the best possible way to serve patients and the public — medicines-focused, patient-centred and community-spirited. But only if it is shaped by, and supported by, the profession.”

He said he saw the profession, including all organisations and individuals within it, as a community of pharmacists which would play a vital role in the life of the nation and that he had set himself, and the Society’s Council and staff, the challenge of helping establish this community. “Today I ask our members to help us meet the challenge,” he added.

“If you are active, encourage others to be,” he said. “But if you have stopped engaging, have become frustrated, feel unable or unwilling to participate, now is the time to get involved. … If members ask ‘why get involved’, tell them ‘now is the time to make history and improve your self-image and value as a pharmacist’.”

Mr Patel stressed that, although the profession and the Department of Health would not always see eye to eye, pharmacists must all remember that they and the Government shared the same objectives.

“These are exciting times to be a pharmacist, and it will require each and every one of us to forge a community of pharmacists to shape the future,” he said. “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Together, we, the Society members, and the Government must seize it.”

Mr Patel also publicly launched the Society’s new Code of Ethics. “The revised code reflects and supports modern pharmacy practice, while continuing to ensure patient safety and public confidence,” he said.