The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7474 p438
20 October 2007

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Letters to the Editor

White Paper

Who needs the Society?

From Mr J. B. Paige, MRPharmS

The need for the proposed 50 per cent increase in fees is based on the bold assumption that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society must survive in a form to be decided by Whitehall mandarins and Lambeth officials. I would question that basic assumption.

When it was formed, the Society represented a membership made up overwhelmingly of pharmacists who owned and ran their own businesses. For over a century and a half it has represented the interests of pharmacy owners and raised the standards of pharmacy staff through a programme of improving education, tight regulation and strict disciplinary action, while ensuring that pharmacists are not encouraged to take on any roles that might enable them to demand higher salaries.

Even now, when the vast majority of pharmacists are employed by the NHS or large retail companies, the Society still appears to act on behalf of those who own pharmacies, not those who work in them.

For instance, several recent statements by Society staff have spoken of opportunities and risks affecting “community pharmacists”, when they are actually talking about business matters affecting only pharmacy owners.

Retail Round-Up for August had four main articles, all giving advice to maximise the profitability of pharmacy businesses. It includes not one word of help for employed pharmacists trying to offer a professional service within a fiercely commercial environment. For that sort of help, pharmacists have to turn to the website of the Pharmacists’ Defence Association.

The fact that 12,000 pharmacists have voluntarily joined the PDA demonstrates the need for an organisation to represent employed pharmacists and the failure of the Society to provide that service.

Similarly, the College of Pharmacy Practice has been helping pharmacists to expand their professional knowledge while the Society has concentrated on finding new income sources for pharmacy owners.

Pharmacists must accept a General Pharmaceutical Council, they are already signing up to the PDA and they can get all the professional support they need from the College of Pharmacy Practice.

Who needs the Royal Pharmaceutical Society?

J. Barrie Paige
Vale, Guernsey

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