Chief pharmacists call for more collaboration and leadership
Further
coverage of the GHP/UKCPA conference
will appear in the next issue
of Hospital Pharmacist.
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Collaboration and leadership in the establishment
of the new professional body for pharmacists have been called for by the UKs four chief pharmacists.
Speaking at the opening session of the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists
and United Kingdom Clinical Pharmacy Association joint conference, held
in Brighton at the end of last month, Keith Ridge, chief pharmaceutical
officer for England said that implementation of the White Paper: “Trust,
assurance and safety: the regulation of health professionals”,
would require an “all-embracing redesign” of professional
regulation and lead to a lasting settlement between the professions and
the public. Collaboration with other professions will be needed but where
medicines are involved pharmacists should be taking a lead, he said.
The profession must come together and seize the opportunity, he concluded.
Norman Morrow, chief pharmaceutical officer for Northern Ireland, urged
radical thinking. “Consider a college of the Isles to serve all
four home countries,” he said.
Bill Scott, chief pharmaceutical officer for Scotland, welcomed the current “bloodless
revolution” in community pharmacy that is shifting the basis of
payment from dispensing volume to clinical care. He called for partnership
between hospital and community pharmacists to develop clinical services
further. He emphasised the need for strong leadership to deliver the
vision and to advocate professional pharmacy skills to patients and to
paymasters. This would be one of the roles of a future college. A college
would have to reflect its constituents’ ambitions, he said.
Existing pharmacy organisations, such as the guild and the UKCPA, have
much to contribute to a future college, suggested Carwen Wynne Howells,
chief pharmaceutical adviser for Wales. They have large, voluntary memberships
and already provide pharmacists with leadership, practice skills and
expertise. The development of practice standards could be one of their
potential inputs to the future college, she said.
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Hospital
Pharmacist