The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7500 p526
3 May 2008

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Sounds so easy

7,500 — and still counting

Sounds so easy

At last, a pharmacist has been appointed one of the national clinical leads for NHS Connecting for Health and is now in post (p540). This is good news because the appointment of a pharmacist — Sharon Hart — at that level will raise the profile of the profession among the policy-makers at the agency.

However, difficulties continue to lie at a local level. Whatever the reassurances given by NHS CfH, many patients and GPs remain reluctant to let pharmacies have access to summary care records. As The Journal has reported many times, without access to these records pharmacists will not be able to develop their clinical roles in a way that will benefit patients.

The recent White Paper “Pharmacy in England — building on strengths, delivering the future” also acknowledges that concerns about patient consent and confidentiality need to be addressed in order for pharmacists to develop professionally.

How can this be tackled? It seems unlikely that any pronouncements from on high will result in the intended outcomes, whatever the policy-makers at NHS CfH hope.

There seems much more chance of success if local initiatives are built upon and the confidence of patients and other health professionals is gained slowly but steadily. A first step will be greater use of the electronic prescription service, which at the moment accounts for less than 5 per cent of all dispensed prescriptions (PJ, 22 March 2008, p326), partly because the technology is not working as it should.

Mrs Hart has already recognised that pharmacists’ relative isolation (compared with GPs) has meant that sorting out the technical problems with the EPS is a barrier. She comes up with one piece of advice that pharmacists should find relatively easy to implement: find other pharmacies in your area who are using the same system, work together to discuss problems and suggest improvements and use that combined pressure to bring influence on suppliers.

We agree with her. Acting on her advice would be a step in the right direction and would, in turn, gain the confidence of patients.

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7,500 — and still counting

The more observant of our readers will have noticed that the present issue of The Pharmaceutical Journal is the 7,500th since the publication was founded in 1841.

At that time the editor wrote that “the reception The Journal has met with, both in the Society and elsewhere, affords every encouragement to perseverance in the undertaking”.

Over nearly 170 years, successive editors and staff of The Journal have indeed persevered and, as far as we know, we are the longest running weekly professional pharmacy journal in the world. We think we may be allowed to feel a little pride in our achievements and those of our editorial predecessors.

Here’s to the next 7,500!

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