There have been huge changes proposed to the NHS in England and we’ve been lobbying to make sure pharmacy’s voice is heard and the potential implications understood. This is just one of the ways that we are able to support our members in England.
Here are just some of the things we’ve been working on in 2011 and our plans for 2012:
Professional empowerment
In 2011 we brought all our workplace pressure activities under a ‘professional empowerment’ banner, engaging with many areas of the profession to look at how we could improve the situation for our members. We published a report looking at how to reduce workplace pressure through professional empowerment. The report outlines a number of recommendations for employers and pharmacists and also commitments from the Society.
We have already started to implement many of these including the launch of a dedicated whistleblowing advice line as well as guidance for locums when they are working as a Responsible Pharmacist.
We commissioned research into the impact of the Responsible Pharmacist regulations and will be looking at how we take the findings forward in 2012.
Responding to government policy
Huge changes are proposed to the NHS in England which will bring about fundamental change, affecting many, if not all, of our members in some way. We’ve been lobbying to make sure pharmacy’s voice is heard and the potential implications of the Health and Social Care Bill are understood. We’ve responded to over a dozen consultations, released as a result of the Bill.
Our lobbying activity led to pharmacy being championed in the House of Lords during the second reading of the Bill. We will continue to lobby government and policy makers on behalf of our members throughout 2012.
We’ve also been working with the Government on the need to de-criminalise dispensing errors. We want them to amend current legislation in a way that will prevent pharmacists being prosecuted for dispensing errors. Success here will undoubtedly have an impact on our professional empowerment work and also underpins our medicines safety work – removing the fear so that pharmacists are more likely to report errors.
Medicines safety
Medicines safety continues to be the number one priority for our members and has been a real focus for the English Pharmacy Board over the past year. A key project in 2011 was our work on transfer of care aimed at improving the transfer of medicines information when patients move between care settings. For the first time our work was endorsed by four other health bodies – the Academy of Medical Royal College, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Nursing. This is a real endorsement of the kind of field that that Society is now working in.
Following the launch in July, a number of early adopter sites have been implementing the recommendations, importantly working cross-sector, cross-profession and between primary and secondary care. The early adopter sites will be reporting back in early 2012 and we will be looking at how we can share the best practice and learning with the wider profession.
LPF development
LPFs continued to develop in England throughout 2011, with more members engaging with both face-to-face and virtual meetings and discussions. In September we invited LPF members to London to share their successes and look ahead to the support they wanted in 2012. A clear message came out that they wanted more central support from the Society to provide resources that could be used to design programmes for members.
Responding to this challenge in 2012 we will be delivering support for three topics over the three ‘academic terms’. Toolkits will provide ideas for workshops, speakers’ notes, case studies and hints for localisation.
Our first topic will be professional empowerment, followed by medicines safety and then delivering public health through pharmacy. Over time we will start to build a resource library that LPFs will be able to access at any time to develop programmes and events that they can deliver locally.
Public relations and communication
Over the past year we’ve been working hard to increase the profile and coverage of pharmacy in the media. We now have a team of over 30 expert pharmacists from across the profession who are available to speak to the media on a range of medicines related issues such as pain, paediatrics, pandemics and critical care capacity.
We’ve run a number of proactive campaigns linking with charities to promote the role of pharmacy in public health. Campaigns include lung cancer awareness, no smoking day, blue September and bowel cancer.
All this means that you’ll now see pharmacist on BBC news, on Sky news and Newsnight. You’ll find us on consumer programmes such as the One Show and Daybreak. You’ll see us in print media, in your local newspaper or hear us on your local radio station. In fact, pharmacists now appear in the media on average every other day.
Partnership working
In 2011 we’ve building much closer relationships with other health professionals, particularly the Royal College of General Practitioners. As well as endorsing our transfer of care work, we also published a joint statement looking at how the two professions can work more closely together. In 2012 we’ll be looking at how we translate the report into reality.
We also attended the RCGP annual conference, holding a fringe session which was attended by the Chair of RCGP. We will continue to foster better relationships with GPs as well as other health bodies throughout 2012.