Steve Churton, RPSGB President

Visionary leadership

Strong leadership is about having a clear vision of where the profession should be heading and the passion and drive to take it there. Throughout the past year the Society has been working with the profession to develop the vision and strategy.

Pharmacy has a proven track record in successfully reaching visionary goals – pharmacist prescribing is a good example. Previous work showed that the profession wanted to prescribe in a wide range of circumstances. Such changes needed the support of government to change the law, the support of doctors and the profession to have further developed its clinical role.

Pharmacist prescribing was achieved thanks to the efforts of many people both within and outside the profession. Strategic lobbying built successful alliances with other healthcare professions and politicians.

We are not resting on these previous successes and are currently finalising the vision for pharmacy – outlining what the profession will look like in 2020.

Advocacy

Our aim is to ensure that pharmacy has a strong, clear voice that is heard by governments, the General Pharmaceutical Council, other health professions, the media and the public. This includes being able to speak equally authoritatively on any aspect of members' practice and on issues affecting the safe and effective use of medicines.

We work with our members to understand the issues that are facing them.

Through our advocacy work the governments in England, Scotland and Wales are starting to see that pharmacy can help solve many of the issues within the NHS, such as:

  • Reducing drug wastage
  • Helping to prevent people getting ill (and as a result reducing the burden of disease on future generations)
  • Improving medicines management to reduce hospital admissions
  • Improving access to medicines ailments schemes which, in turn, release GP time to deal with more serious problems

Our current campaigns include working with the Royal College of General Practitioners to develop recommendations which will improve the working relationships between pharmacists and GPs. We are also campaigning to promote the patient safety, pharmacy workload and economic benefits of original pack dispensing.  You can find out more about our campaigns here.