It is not too late to be heard
With less than two weeks left to submit thoughts and ideas to the Clarke Inquiry — commissioned by the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society but independently examining what a professional body for pharmacy might look like and do — more voices are now being heard.
In this week’s issue we cover a seemingly disparate selection of
topics, some of which are prompted by the Clarke Inquiry, others of which
are apparently more tangential.
First is a News feature examining rumours that started reaching The
Journal some months ago that Scotland
wanted to go it alone (p43). This raises
the major question of how the professional body can respond to devolution
and, as a direct result, what the implications are for its governance.
Secondly, there are two Agenda articles (p55 and p56) examining different
aspects of the Clarke remit. One, in particular, admonishes the profession
for being dilatory, to say the least, in responding to the inquiry.
Finally, the first clutch of this week’s Letters (p49) come from
industrial pharmacists, who will need due consideration when it comes
to establishing the professional body if they are not to continue to
feel disenfranchised. In addition, there is a call to ensure that more
pharmacists are persuaded to consider the industry as a career option
and the beginning of a debate about whether other scientists in industry
might have role in the new professional body.
The fact that all these are issues that Nigel Clarke and his team will
need to consider indicates how tricky it will be for the inquiry team
to put forward even the bare bones of a professional body, let alone
for the Society’s Council and the profession in turn to agree the
way forward.
It is not too late to make your views known to Clarke
and his inquiry team (the consultation period is due to end on 31 January 2008) and the
more members of the profession who can inform the debate, the better.
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Are you proud of your achievements?
This issue sees the launch of a new series “My
career” (p68).
We know that many readers of The Journal turn
to the back pages first so we decided
to acknowledge this by placing some relevant articles adjacent to the “Classified” section.
These articles will be looking at some of the more specialist opportunities in
hospital pharmacy, as well as different roles in the community sector, industry
and academia.
We will be examining different jobs, including portfolio careers
(where people do a little bit of this and a little bit of that), as well as
ways to pay off student debts.
If you have an interesting tale to tell
we would like
to hear from you.
Telephone 020 7572 2429 or e-mail editor@pharmj.org.uk
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