The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7469 p278
15 September 2007

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Give the Society more money

Dealing with personal control anomalies

Give the Society more money

At last the Government has announced that it will support the Royal Pharmaceutical Society financially in establishing the General Pharmaceutical Council (the separate regulatory body for pharmacy) due to be up and running by 2010 (p279).

Although this money — £3m over two years — is a start, it is not enough. Not only should the Government explain how it has calculated the sum and what it intends it the money to cover; it must also recognise that there will be additional costs associated with creating a professional leadership body and that there is no reason why the profession should shoulder these alone.

Since the announcement in February 2007 of the plans to separate the current functions of the Society and to create two bodies to accommodate them, the Society has undertaken a great deal of additional activity that has absorbed its resources not only in terms of staff time but also in paying for external agencies to support the activity.

For example, the effort that went into providing the Carter working party with papers and information that underpinned the Government’s thinking came at a price. Furthermore, the market research that the Society has commissioned from Opinion Leader — to determine the perceptions and expectations of what the Society does and how a viable body can be developed — has been paid for by the Society.

There are many other pieces of work that will have to be undertaken in the coming years and the Government must not presume that the membership will be satisfied by the contribution announced at the British Pharmaceutical Conference this week.

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Dealing with personal control anomalies

Challenges created by the different legislative processes in the UK home countries have come to a head over the implications of remote supervision. Until recently, the concepts of personal control and supervision seem to have been inextricably linked.

But now the Government in Westminster has decided to separate them and will start the formal consultation on the statutory legislation that will underpin the concept of the “responsible pharmacist” to deal with the current anomalies surrounding personal control enshrined in the Medicines Act 1968 (p279).

Supervision, on the other hand, is governed by both the Medicines Act and NHS legislation, which differs among the home countries.

In theory, the Government has adopted what appears to be a pragmatic course: sort out the major anomalies now and tackle the more controversial aspects later. However, the concepts underpinning the responsible pharmacist and supervision are one and the same. And if they are not sorted out at the same time, pharmacists are more likely to be confused than liberated.

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