The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7479 p588
24 November 2007

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• Abortion
• NPA PMI bid
• Retention fees (5)
• The Society (2)
• The Council
• Community pharmacy
• Health care regulations
• Medicines distribution
• Ethics
• Locum pharmacy (3)
• Remuneration

Letters to the Editor

Health care regulations

Let pharmacy not be at the forefront

From Mr M. A. Walker, MRPharmS

At the start of summer, Keith Ridge, the chief pharmaceutical officer for England, proposed to reframe pharmacy regulation at the College of Pharmacy Practice’s annual meeting (PJ, 21 July 2007, p61). I am concerned that pharmacy regulation might be considered in isolation instead of within the wider framework of health care regulation. I thought that the White Paper envisaged that health care regulation would be common across the various professions.

I hope that the All-Party Pharmacy Group will scrutinise the recently introduced Health and Social Care Bill and the related secondary legislation and ensure that pharmacy is regulated with the same scope and manner as other health care professions. The pharmacy profession would definitely benefit from being regarded and regulated as a mainstream health care profession and I hope that the APPG can deliver this.

After decades of pharmacy regulation being a special case let us not repeat this error when creating the General Pharmaceutical Council.

Dr Ridge may have been thinking that all health care regulation should be reframed. That is a much wider topic than pharmacy regulation, and doctors, dentists, nurses etc will need to be consulted in that debate. However, pharmacy will be better served by being a follower and not the leader in any “reframing of regulation” that may occur in the future.

Mark Walker
Oxford

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