The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7484 p26
5/12 January 2008

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Statutory regulation of pharmacy technicians appearing on the horizon

In this article Christine Gray, head of corporate governance at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, urges pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to have their say in the Department of Health’s consultation on an amending order that will update some of pharmacy’s regulatory provisions

When the Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians Order 2007 (P&PTO) was made last year it had one important component missing. The Government has now unveiled its proposals to plug this gap.

The P&PTO covers the statutory regulation of pharmacy technicians by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in England and Wales, but not Scotland.

To rectify this, the Government has now begun a 13-week consultation on an amending Order that will extend the arrangements to pharmacy technicians in Scotland.

However, its impact will be more general, as the pharmacy technician provisions in the P&PTO have not been implemented yet — they have been put on hold until this amending Order is made, so that pharmacy technician regulation can be brought in across Great Britain at the same time.

This amending Order will be called the Health Care and Associated Professions (Miscellaneous Amendments) No 2 Order 2008 — referred to here as S60 1B. As the title suggests, it is one of a pair of health Orders that the Government is consulting on.

S60 1A (which does not concern us here) covers matters where regulation is reserved to Westminster and S60 1B covers both reserved and devolved issues.

S60 1B is what is termed a “portmanteau” Order; in other words, it proposes amendments to a variety of health professions’ Orders, one of which is the P&PTO.

Many of the proposed amendments to the P&PTO are fairly technical and straightforward, in that they relate solely to the bringing into regulation of pharmacy technicians in Scotland. However, the Order does propose a number of other changes that are relevant to pharmacy.

For example, it proposes provisions for temporary registration during emergencies. It also proposes an addition to the list of reasons for regarding someone’s fitness to practise as impaired — namely, a decision taken by the Independent Barring Board or its Northern Irish or Scottish equivalent that the person should be barred from working with children or vulnerable adults.

As explained above, the Society cannot implement the statutory regulation of pharmacy technicians anywhere in Great Britain until this Order is made, so it welcomes the publication of the consultation draft, and is keen for these provisions to be brought into force as soon as possible. That said, there are some provisions in the draft which do give rise to concern, and a few of these are highlighted below (more information can be found on the Society’s website).

Issues of concern

Temporary registration with regard to emergencies S60 1B Schedule 3 paragraph 6 proposes an amendment to the P&PTO that would give the Society power to register people as practising pharmacists on a temporary basis, and to annotate register entries to indicate prescribing rights on a temporary basis, during civil emergencies.

These provisions have been drafted so that prescribing and treatment might continue in case of pandemics, for example. and are intended to be used for a finite emergency period. Similar provisions are being proposed for doctors and nurses.

However, no equivalent powers are being proposed to register people as pharmacy technicians for the duration of an emergency. Under the suggested powers, a pharmacy technician could be temporarily registered as a pharmacist but a medicines counter assistant or dispensing assistant, say, could not be registered as a pharmacy technician.

The forthcoming “responsible pharmacist” provisions could specify that some tasks could only be performed with either a pharmacist or a registered pharmacy technician present. A pandemic could well leave pharmacies without any of the necessary staff permitted to perform such functions. It could therefore be argued that the Society should also be given powers to register people temporarily as pharmacy technicians in an emergency.

Education and continuing professional development committees Schedule 3 paragraphs 13, 14 and 22 of S60 1B propose changes to the P&PTO that would mean that either the continuing professional development committee or the education committee could carry out the CPD committee’s functions.

However, such flexibility might not seem appropriate, given the different roles of the two committees. The CPD committee will make decisions about individuals coming back on to and staying off the registers, while the education committee will deal with the delivery of teaching, learning and assessment.

It has been argued that these are two distinct roles that are not interchangeable and that will require different expertise if they are not to be subject to challenge.

Interim orders The Society Council’s S60 Response Working Group wishes to clarify the impact of the suspension provisions in the P&PTO (Articles 30[4] and [5]) on the legal framework of the Medicines Act 1968 in the situation of a pharmacist who is an unincorporated sole proprietor and whose registration has been suspended.

The working group wants to satisfy itself that in such a situation, appropriate arrangements can be put in place by suspended pharmacists which both maintain protection of the public and allow pharmacy services to continue to be lawfully provided from the premises.