Hospital Pharmacist
2007;14:77
March 2007

News summary

Mixed responses to splitting Royal Pharmaceutical Society

News that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is to lose its regulatory function and that a royal-college type body is to be formed to take on the leadership of the profession has been greeted with mixed responses.

The Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists is broadly supportive of the direction that the proposals set out in the White Paper are taking the profession. Anthony Oxley, president of the guild said: “We welcome the formation of a General Pharmaceutical Council to regulate pharmacists and pharmacy technicians and pharmacy premises, as a separate regulatory body.” He added that it is inevitable, in the current climate, that regulatory functions must be seen to be independent of any vested interests of pharmacists.

The guild supports the formation of a royal college-type organisation to carry on the representation function of the Society. “Critical to the success of such a college is that all areas of practice are effectively represented, something that the guild considers that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has not been able to achieve … If a prime function of the royal college is to carry out revalidation of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, it should be structured to accommodate the clinical roles of pharmacists now and in the future, when we expect to see far less emphasis on “hospital” or “ community” pharmacy work, and much more focus on developing clinical roles in a multidisciplinary environment”. The royal college-type body should start with a “clean sheet,” the guild said.

Sounding a more cautious note, Colin Ranshaw, principal pharmacist for quality assurance and control at Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust and member of the Society’s Council, stressed that the profession must build upon, but not lose, what is good about the present system. “The RPSGB is an effective umbrella organisation bringing together pharmacists from all areas of the profession. RPSGB regulates and sets standards for pharmacists, premises, medicines and education and has been doing this very effectively.” He added: “The professional body that is left when regulation is removed must offer equal professional leadership to the majority (community-based pharmacists) and the minority (hospital-, industry- and academia-based pharmacists) because this is [the Society’s] strength.”

The detailed structure of the royal college-type body is not yet known. Duncan McRobbie, chairman of the United Kingdom Clinical Pharmacy Association, said he would like to see pharmacists who work at a specialist level recognised by the royal-college type organisation and he emphasised the importance of ensuring that it reflects the interests of smaller specialities. He added that the value of having a royal college would be that it would speak with one voice. “At the moment, the number of organisations with different agendas results in no cohesive voice for the profession.”

One potential area of conflict looks set to be whether pharmacists will need to undergo an accreditation process before becoming eligible for membership of the royal college-type body. At a recent Department of Health stakeholder meeting, Bill Scott, Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for Scotland, said that the royal college-type body would not be “elitist” and pointed out that there is stringent accreditation already in place for pharmacists, namely a pharmacy degree and the preregistration training year. However, Celia Feetam, president of the College of Mental Health Pharmacists, said she is concerned that a royal college that does not have a strict accreditation process would dilute processes already in place for some specialist pharmacy groups.

Plans to split the Society were set out last month. “Trust, assurance and safety, the regulation of health professionals in the 21st century” is available from the DoH website.