As a pharmacist and owner of an independent pharmacy you’re focused on meeting the needs of your patients and growing your business, providing bespoke public health and medicines management that is easily accessible and responsive.

You may well be a member of an organisation which meets your business needs, but the Society is here to support your professional needs as a pharmacist. Here are some of the ways we’ve been doing this in 2011:

• Contract changes in England and Wales
We created dedicated web pages which acted as hubs for all the information (from all relevant organisations) on changes to the English and Welsh contracts. In addition we produced new practice guidance to support the implementation of specific services e.g. New Medicines Service.

• Joint statement with Royal College of General Practitioners

The joint statement and recommendations set out clearly what pharmacists and GPs can do to improve the working relationship between the two professions. We know that successful pharmacies, those delivering a range of services, meeting their patients’ needs, are the ones that have built great relationships with the local healthcare team.

• Map of evidence
If you’re looking to introduce innovative new services, our map of evidence allows you to learn from the experiences of others. We’re also building the evidence base, which can be used to influence the commissioning of new services.

• Clinical audit toolkits - to help you with evaluating your services and building the case for commissioners. Examples include smoking cessation and owings.

• Leadership Competency Framework
The LCF was launched to support the development of leaders at all career stages. It is designed to be read and used in conjunction with any learning and development activity and performance assessment tools that you may already be using. It can also be used by you and your staff to develop vital leadership skills.

• Medicines, Ethics and Practice
Our new look MEP was completely revamped in 2011, with a much greater focus on professionalism and putting professional judgment at the heart of the decision-making process. MEP supports you and your staff in decision-making.~

• Support alerts
We launched our support alert email service to let you know about any urgent patient safety issues. This is part of our suite of email services including E-news, e-alerts and events emails.

• Our Support service
You may well be the superintendent as well as the owner. Our support team can help with all your enquiries whatever level or grade you are practising at.

Looking ahead to 2012 we will continue to support you in your role. Here are some of the key priorities we are working on:

• Responsible Pharmacist regulations
We commissioned research into the impact of the RP regulations and will be taking the findings from the research forward in 2012.

• MEP edition 36
We’ll launch edition 36 of MEP in July, building on the success of edition 35.

• Daily news alerts
We’re launching a new service so you can find out about the health stories making the headlines without having to read all the papers, helping you to be prepared for any questions from patients.

• Professional standards
We’ll produce professional standards for public health, an area where greater demands are being placed on pharmacists. We are also leading professional standards for medicines use in care homes, where pharmacists play such a vital role.

• Decriminalisation of single dispensing errors
We know this remains a concern for all our members, and although we have made significant progress the threat of prosecution still remains. We will continue to work hard with the Government to amend current legislation.

•  Transfer of care
We’ll start to see the outputs from our early adopter sites, including evidence of how front line pharmacists ensure patients have the right medicines as they return home after a hospital stay. You can also get involved in the project.

As well as all this you’ll continue to receive your regular copy of the Pharmaceutical Journal, as well as getting access to all our online resources, such as CPD support and support for clinical audit.

Your membership.

Your professional body.

We can only do this with your continued support.