The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7483 p716
22/29 December 2007

Society summary

Further annotations to the Register possible

The Government consultation on the responsible pharmacist regulations seeks views on an annotation to the Register against those pharmacists with “sufficient length of registration and experience to be a responsible pharmacist.”

The draft society response, considered at the December Council meeting, proposes that all pharmacists should be capable of becoming a responsible pharmacist at the point of joining the Register but in order for a responsible pharmacist to be absent or to be responsible for more than one pharmacy, extra competencies (in particular, in leadership and management) would be required.

In addition, the draft stated the Society “strongly opposes determining the ability of a pharmacists to undertake the role of the responsible pharmacist based on specific lengths of time on the Register” and it “believes that the necessary competencies can be achieved in a variety of ways”. Acquiring extra competencies to be absent or responsible could lead to a need for an annotation on the Register.

Graham Phillips said some of the competencies are not currently within the undergraduate syllabus. “Some schools of pharmacy do a great deal, some do rather less and some do very little indeed on that. But we have to recognise that is fine; going forward you can prepare that, but that will take some years. We still have the existing profession, never having had those competencies.

“[It] would be great if we had a deanery structure or some equivalent of what medicine has in terms of getting people up to speed, but we do not. There is a big debate here, not simply about the whole of the undergraduate course, but the whole of continuing professional development and revalidation going forward.”

Jonathan Buisson warned that the practical difficulties of having a certificate of competence should not be underestimated. Using medicines use review accreditation to illustrate the potential problem, he said: “This has not been universally adopted and took a considerable amount of time to bring in. We need to be careful of the dangers of the amount of work in bringing this in.”

John Gentle agreed, adding: “I think if the Society can control these competency assessments and it is done through the Society, rather than given to a whole multiplicity of providers, although the quantity needed will cause a problem and maybe we will need a multiplicity of providers to allow this pragmatically to work.”

Stephen Denyer said he felt uncomfortable that graduates that come from school and go through registration take responsibility of sole charge. “I feel uncomfortable listening to the discussions about competency to become a responsible pharmacist, because I think it is difficult to define the competencies.

“It will be difficult to test the competencies. It will be difficult to test them across a large body of practitioners. I think what we are talking about is the confidence that comes from experience that makes someone more likely to be able to exercise the role of responsible pharmacist.

“Perhaps if we are going to have any reflections on the document which will change or embellish it, I think we might argue that a period of experience, which does not need an annotation on the Register, might suffice for the role of responsible pharmacist,” he commented.

However, Martin Astbury explained that the proposal was not saying that extra competencies were needed for absence where only general sales list medicines would be able to be sold, but for when supervision and delegation were involved — things that will come in the future — and this recommendation was supported by research.

“So we need to reserve our position here, that we can, if necessary, annotate the Register, and that in order to be absent you will need to have these extra competencies. So I urge you to support this,” he said.

At the end of the debate, the Council accepted the recommendation.