The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7488 p148
9 February 2008

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Now is the time to take a risk, to take a chance and make a difference

By Catherine Duggan

The White Paper “Trust, assurance and safety” sets out the need for a separate regulator and leadership body or pharmacy.

In 2010, there will be a new body, the General Pharmaceutical Council, to regulate the profession, together with the opportunity to create a separate single professional or leadership body for all sectors of pharmacy.

Here lies a significant opportunity for the many existing groups in pharmacy to capitalise on the leading role they play for practitioners. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity made all the more important since leadership of the profession has historically been fragmented by sector and specialism.

Change presents many opportunities, including opportunities to influence a new leadership body. Now there is a chance to unite the profession with one voice for the benefit of both pharmacy and patients.

What pharmacy does not want

What pharmacy does not want is a professional leadership body that mirrors the disengagement that currently exists in the profession. But one can only engage when issues are relevant, important and, dare I say it, pertinent; as Alan Rogers put it, “Am I bovvered?” (PJ, 19 January 2008, p55).

Why have pharmacists been so disengaged with each other in the past? I would argue that they are all busy professionals trying their best to improve the use of medicines for patients, in all sectors of pharmacy. They have little chance to lead from a national perspective (although many take the opportunity when they can).

With an effective leadership body to co-ordinate these efforts, to promote leading edge practice, to ensure recognition of busy professionals and to ensure the appropriate support is available (indeed required) to practise at different levels, pharmacists may become more engaged.

Such engagement is is, after all, what the smaller pharmacy groups (such as the British Oncology Pharmacy Association, the Neonatal and Paediatric Pharmacists Association, the College of Pharmacy Practice, etc) have been providing for years.

What pharmacy no longer wants is a fragmented, disengaged body that does not promote practitioners effectively at the highest levels of influence or ensure the appropriate person speaks at the appropriate place on the appropriate issue related to drugs. If the new professional body does not provide practitioners with what they want, they will continue to lead themselves through the established smaller pharmacy groups, even though they may not have one voice this way.

One leadership body would allow all practitioners to unite around a common theme — pharmacy.

What the Government wants

It is clear that the Government and the public want competent and skilled medicines experts and clinical practitioners on the high street, and this is where community pharmacists have their greatest opportunity for decades to embrace new service roles. Primary care commissioners want to engage with such practitioners, safe in the knowledge of their clinical skills.

The UKCPA is one of many groups and organisations that has supported the development of different levels of practice for the benefit of patients and public, which could be integral to an effective professional body.

Many of the smaller groups have successfully striven to deliver the most appropriate support for their members. Such groups do not represent all pharmacists but an effective leadership body could. There are specialist groups set up to meet the needs of individual practitioners precisely because they have not seen the representative leadership they need.

The UKCPA, for example, has spent 25 years developing and nurturing practice, striving to achieve excellence and expertise in previously uncharted areas — often waiting for policies to follow. This is true professionalism: working within the evidence base tailored to individual patient needs even before guidelines or policies; leading on formulary management; and pushing the boundaries with prescribing, risk management, and cost effectiveness.

An effective professional body should lead on these issues and have an active approach towards informing the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the National Patient Safety Agency of the priorities, driven by its members — pharmacists — who work with these on a daily basis.

It is always best to remember that the best leaders are those who lead from within. As Stephen Reicher and colleagues wrote in Scientific American Mind for August/September 2007: “Leaders (heads of states or groups or bosses) must work to understand the values and opinions of their citizens or team members. The best leaders shape what their followers want to do by moulding the group’s identity in ways to promote their agendas.”

A professional body will depend on members accepting and then following the authority of its lead. Practitioners of the profession will not engage if they perceive self-interest from the leadership body, which must serve its members.

What pharmacy needs

Of course, the independent Clarke Inquiry will greatly inform the model, but individuals need a clear vision of what a new leadership body should do and look like — a vision that is inclusive and will unite the profession. The leadership body needs to have robust aspirations, demonstrate strong governance and have shared ownership if it is to attract members.

The UKCPA wants to be part of this historic period of opportunity. It wants a body that provides infrastructure and support, that motivates and inspires, that implements succession planning, that provides realistic mentorship and leadership, that promotes career and practitioner development across all sectors and that is an acknowledged voice of expertise at all levels of practice.

Pharmacy has an opportunity for a new professional body to capitalise on the strengths of all of its expertise and practitioner leaders. There have always been opportunities for collaboration, to share and disseminate innovative practice and to impact on patient care. The time is now here to realise this opportunity: to collaborate, to be inclusive, and to take a lead.

Harnessing the breadth of speciality in pharmacy across all sectors will be a challenge but there is an opportunity now to focus on the issues that unite the profession and work together to resolve the issues that divide it.

It is time, perhaps, to take a risk, to take a chance, to make a difference. What is needed is a coalition for pharmacy, a coalition for the future, a coalition for change.