PDA says supportive professional body needed
Pharmacists need a supportive professional body, the Pharmacists’ Defence Association has told the Clarke
Inquiry.
Giving evidence on what the future professional body should be like,
Mark Koziol, PDA chairman, said that it should be a body that provides
the tools that pharmacists need to do their jobs. These included setting
educational standards, producing useful publications, practice guidance,
helping pharmacists keep up to date, facilitating peer and specialist
groups, supporting weaker or disadvantaged members of the profession
and providing a powerful and unified voice.
It should be the professional body, and not the General Pharmaceutical
Council, that sets or negotiates professional standards, he said. The
GPhC could then police them.
The members of the professional body should be primarily pharmacy graduates,
Mr Koziol went on, not GPhC registrants. And its purpose should be to
further the intersts of these members. Pharmaceutical scientists, pharmacy
technicians and qualified persons could be associate members.
The new professional body should have a fresh vision, a fresh approach
and be focused on its members, with the new regulator being physically
located as far away as possible. He attributed the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society’s poor reputation among its members to the vigour with
which it regulated them.
However, he said that the Society’s Royal Charter contains the
provisions that the new professional body would need. But he added that
the Society should undergo a root and branch shake-up and slim down its
executive, if it were to avoid putting people off joining when it was
no longer a requirement.
Mr Koziol suggested that the basic membership fee should be no more than £50
a year, with other income being generated from publishing activities
and from selling extra services to members.
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