Technicians in Scotland to be registered by Society
Other suggested amendments
The draft Order also sets out:
• A new main objective for the Society
that introduces the concept of well-being, which is intended
to reflect the changing focus
of healthcare from cure to prevention and health promotion
• Plans for temporarily re-registering recently retired pharmacists
in cases of national emergency where the numbers of pharmacists
available for practice might be insufficient — pandemic influenza
is an example
• Suitably qualified technicians could be temporarily registered
as pharmacists
• An extended duty of co-operation with health service managers
• Wider requirements for submitting an annual report and a strategic
plan to the Privy Council
• A requirement to explain annually how the Society complies with
the Equality Act 2006 |
Pharmacy technicians in Scotland will soon be able to register with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
Shortly before Christmas 2007, the Department of Health launched a consultation on
a draft Health Care and Associated Professions (Miscellaneous Amendments)
(No 2) Order 2008.
This seeks to amend the Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians
Order 2007, among other legislation, to bring pharmacy technicians working
in Scotland into the voluntary registration arrangements currently applicable
to technicians working in England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the
Isle of Man.
Although the amendments will come into force when the new Order is made,
technician registration will remain voluntary throughout Great Britain
until the Secretary of State for Health (responsible for professional
regulation in England and Wales) and the Scottish Parliament jointly
agree a date for it to become a practice requirement.
Hemant Patel, the Society’s President, said: “This amendment
to the Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians Order 2007 is good news because
it will promote consistency throughout Great Britain.”
Jeremy Holmes, the Society’s chief executive, said: “When
the Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians Order 2007 was published, we
were disappointed to see that it did not cover regulation of pharmacy
technicians in Scotland. We have been urging the Government to rectify
this omission ever since and so I am delighted to see that things are
moving in this area.”
However, Mr Holmes added that the Society had concerns about some elements
of the proposed Order.
These include the absence of any provision for temporarily broadening
the register of technicians in cases of national emergency and the absence
of provisions for making temporarily registered persons subject to the
usual fitness to practise requirements in relation to their usual registration
status.
The draft Order also contains a provision that would make it possible
for both the Society’s Education Committee and its Continuing Professional
Development Committee to discharge the current functions of the CPD Committee.
This concerns the Society because of the different functions of the two
committees: the Education Committee deals with the initial training of
pharmacists and the CPD Committee decides whether people can return to,
or should be removed from, the Register.
A further area of concern is that the Order does not seek to amend the
definition of suspension from the Register in relation to interim orders.
As it stands, the Society believes that a suspended, unincorporated sole
proprietor pharmacist would be forced to sell his business even though
any allegations might subsequently be disproved.
The Society wants as many pharmacists and technicians as possible to
send comment on the proposals to the DoH. Consultation on the draft Order
ends on 22 March 2008.
See Article p26 |
The
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