First anniversary of Inclusive Pharmacy Practice

We’re marking the first anniversary of the Joint National Plan for Inclusive Pharmacy Practice (IPP) in England today alongside The Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK) and NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE&I) by sharing the positive progress made and inviting all pharmacy professionals to participate in and support the IPP initiative.

In the past year, we’ve:

• Published Improving Inclusion and Diversity across our Profession: our strategy for pharmacy 2020-2025. The outputs from the strategy undertaken to date can be found here. We’ve also publishing our gender and ethnicity pay gaps reports and actions plans. In 2021, we published a disability pay gap report and action plan.
• We conducted a review of our recruitment processes and are collecting inclusion and diversity data for all elected and appointed positions across boards and committees. We published this data in 2021 to indicate the make-up of our membership and the wider profession.
• In collaboration with members of the profession and key stakeholders and organisations, we developed and launched a RPS Inclusion and Wellbeing Pledge, as well as am antiracism statement and an educational resource highlighting race related microaggressions and micro-affirmative behaviours.

Thorrun Govind, English Pharmacy Board Chair, RPS said: “Achieving inclusive pharmacy practice will continue to involve open and honest conversations within teams and organisations that result in tangible and meaningful actions to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in pharmacy and in healthcare service delivery for all communities. We set out the expectation that our profession should look at its leaders and see themselves represented, and patients and the public should experience the same and we are committed to delivering on this vision.”

In support of the IPP initiative the RPS, APTUK and NHSE&I are running two joint webinars in April:

• Tuesday, April 5 at 3pm: Population health management webinar for system pharmacy professionals - register here.
• Tuesday, April 26: Population health management webinar for community pharmacy professionals – register here.

Read more RPS news.