We’re proud to share the Joint National Plan for Inclusive Pharmacy Practice for all pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in England, along with our partners NHS England/NHS Improvement and the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK.
The work builds on the Joint National Statement of Principles for Inclusive Pharmacy Professional Practice issued in September 2020. The new Plan commits partners to acting on three themes by Summer 2021:
Leadership and representation
- Work to improve fairness and equity in recruitment, promotion, leadership diversity, disciplinary and governance practices
Professional education and training
- Develop and share current training and resources on culturally competent healthcare delivery
Healthcare service delivery
- Produce a resource pack to help pharmacy teams address health inequalities.
RPS President Sandra Gidley said:
“We are proud to be collaborating with NHS England/Improvement and APTUK to make pharmacy, and pharmacy practice, more inclusive. We’ll be working with them to make the ambitions of the plan a reality.
“The RPS Inclusion and Diversity strategy for pharmacy demonstrates our clear commitment creating a sense of belonging across the profession and we have already started to deliver on this.
“We already publish our gender and ethnicity pay gap reports and action plans. This year, we’ll report our disability outcomes too and take action where needed.
“We’ve also 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’ll publish the data this year and it will be reviewed against the makeup of our membership and the profession.
“For the first time ever, we are running a survey to collect equality, diversity and inclusion data from our members. We’ll bench mark the data we collect to see how our membership compares with the wider profession and then address any barriers to engagement with us. I urge all members to complete this survey so we can get as full a picture as possible.”
Read the Joint National Plan for Inclusive Pharmacy Practice in England
Read the joint Letter to pharmacy professionals from RPS, NHS England and Improvement and APTUK
Read the 2020 Joint National Statement of Principles for Inclusive Pharmacy Professional Practice
Provide RPS with your equality, inclusion and diversity data. You need to log in to the website to ensure the survey is completed by members only, but the data collection is completely anonymous.